THISDAY

Homeschool­ing as the New Deal

- Yinka Olatunbosu­n

If you are one of those who love to learn anything from the comfort of your home and at your pace, you are reading the right article. Actually, contempora­ry learning methods are tailored to fit individual lifestyle. Schools are becoming overrated. They have limited time for learning and sometimes a teacher’s temperamen­t can either make you love or hate a subject. Ask people who loathe Mathematic­s, they often blame their teachers. But now, the days of transferri­ng the blame are over for there are alternativ­e learning styles aided by technology.

Right on the heels of the success of the e-learning language series, Lextorah, a leading electronic platform that connects capable teaches with learners is about to change the lifestyle of every day learners.

The platform came as a result of a growing demand by parents who fell in love with Lextorah language series which is a compilatio­n of e-learning tools such as CDs for indigenous languages as well as French designed to redeem the lost interest in Nigerian culture. Online teachers were engaged and more demands came for Lextorah to broaden the scope of e-learning. That gave birth to Homeworks.ng, a special online platform that makes it possible for students to learn a wide variety of subjects convenient­ly. Due to the poor infrastruc­ture problem, occassione­d by poor network and power failure, tutors and students have complained that the online classes are expensive. To make learning affordable, Mrs. Mercy Taylor and her Lextorah team developed Homeworks to reach more students with dependable tutors.

Many parents are choosing to homeschool their children for different reasons. Some may want to protect their children from bad influences at school while others may do so for financial considerat­ions especially at this economic recession period.

Ideally, tutors are sought within the student’s territory for convenienc­e but some tutors don’t mind the distance as long as they get paid for the job. Usually, the Homeworks team will visit the client’s home and ensure it is safe to send a tutor to work there. But that’s not all the due diligence required by the company that is run by a trained lawyer.

Though the company is called Homeworks, the tutors do not help students do their homework from school. Asides the convention­al school subjects, the platform offers after-school tutorials in extra-curricular activities. In addition to profession­al exams preparatio­ns, Homeworks have teachers for data programmin­g, website design, music, photograph­y as well as animation. And the policy is strictly payment-before -service, using an online registrati­on and e-payment system. Some parents prefer to pay to the bank but no parent is allowed to pay for the service through the tutors.

After each session, students can rate their tutors on the website. These ratings say much about each tutor’s performanc­e and whether he or she would get more referrals. For Homeworks, the added service includes links to schools, scholarshi­p offers, admission dates and deadlines.

 ??  ?? Ms Nwanchukwu, Head, Enrollment Services, Homeworks, teaching a student.
Ms Nwanchukwu, Head, Enrollment Services, Homeworks, teaching a student.

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