Ashvini is a content writer, ghost writer, blogger & recipe curator.

She’s a former corporate trainer with over 6 years of experience in software training. A mother to an effervescent 7 year old daughter, she’s also a fitness enthusiast & an avid follower of politics. Ashvini believes in the power of sustainability & minimalism while inspiring others to adopt a more healthy & simple lifestyle.

I have known her for some time through her work online.Being an educated mommy she shares very holistic ideas about the kind of education she wants for her daughter.Listen to the podcast.

How do you choose online resources for your children?

In my opinion, you can assess your child’s aptitude for a certain subject basis the kind of inclination he/she shows towards it in a given phase of time. Children are innately intuitive of their interests & they’re just like sponges when it comes to learning something they’ve been longing to, irrespective of the medium they’re picking it from. Now that we’re pulling off a completely indoor-based life due to the pandemic and the indispensable dependence on virtual classes by the school, I honestly feel, the share of e-learning material they are dealing with, is sufficient.

When you want to help the child extrapolate his/her knowledge to a much wider spectrum about something, there’s enough free material that’s available on the Internet.

For instance, we can even find Walter Lewin’s lectures on Astrophysics from the MIT, on YouTube.

All it takes is just a bit of time-investment and guidance from us.

What are your must have resources for parents?

The most important resources for parents, according to me, would be a stable Internet connection besides having a gadget (either a laptop/smartphone) that can be reserved for the child’s learning for a stipulated period of daily hours.

More so, the most ideal thing to do here, is to calibrate the gadget in such a way that the screen time doesn’t take a toll on their eyesight or moods. Also, if possible, try to re-invent the space into a mini-workstation. Allocate a certain corner/room for the child to sit in, that’s immune to any distraction or noise from the rest of the house.

What are the problems you faced during 2020 and elearning?

As a parent of a 7 year old, I strongly felt the challenging atmosphere that my daughter had to quickly adapt to. Particularly when kids of this age heavily depend & thrive on the personal connect with the surrounding elements of their school. It became pretty difficult in making her comprehend the little choice we are left with due to the pandemic situation.

Since her full-fledged virtual classes followed after a month of starting her academic curriculum via offline material from her teachers, she had reasonable time to make peace with the slowly changing medium that would probably stay for this year. The most difficult aspect here was replacing her share of co-curricular activities with the kind we would make her engage with now, and the physical absence of her play dates, weekend trips to fun places and schoolmates.

That can affect a child’s learning motivation beyond imagination, especially in kids younger than 8 or 9. Hence, as parents, it’s essential that we take some time out of our schedule to either play with them and have random yet meaningful conversations with them. Free-play is actually a pleasant collateral of this homestay now that children usually develop their own games & take to DIY stuff on their own or learning online.

Do mention a few courses or apps  online your children use?

Since I like to keep it optimal to avoid any kind of overwhelm, I prefer to let my daughter learn about trivial topics from YouTube (since I sit along with her then).

Besides that, I have been happy about using the Freedom app for her since the past 1.5 years, which is an app that aims at helping young kids sharpen their reading & spelling capabilities and vocabulary while providing them with the best of content. At the cost of sounding old-school, I would always like to emphasize that I prefer more of paper-back books than their e-versions for my kid. I buy books that would intrigue her. Also, I like using free online sources for her like w3schools & SoloLearn.

What do you feel about excessive propaganda advertising when it comes to learning platforms?

Do you think the value of such platforms match the money spent?

I totally condemn the aggressive marketing campaigns that certain learning platforms have adopted in the wake of the pandemic. Unfortunately, from the feedback of my acquaintances, I can fairly deduce that none of them lives up to the tall claims they tout as their USP.

Sadly, there’s a large part of the parents’ population which has fallen for them assuming that it would be a judicious investment for their children’s learning. Statistically, most of the non-technical guardians find it challenging to evaluate the claims of such e-learning firms. Frankly speaking, their advertising strategies seem no less than the systematic frauds we’ve been aware of lately.

For instance, there have been a lot of e-learning organisations that have forayed into teaching coding to students belonging to a large spectrum of age. As careful investors, it would always be recommended that parents/guardians first research if the said courses/material are available for free on the Internet. And then take a call.

From a really personal perspective, otherwise, I would any day prefer looking up to stuff that can be availed from trusted learning programs of  Unacademy, Udemy etc.

For a little older children, learning coding the old-school way is actually more fun!

One can always explore app-building & source codes through places like GitHub.

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What about online gaming advertising aimed at kids?Your opinion?Do share your tips for keeping kids safe online?

Now, most of us know that businesses are into digital marketing majorly through retargeting ads on various platforms, which procure a lot of our info through our signed in accounts & surfing behaviour. Hence, it’s first important that irrespective of the age of your children, you should explain to them about how advertising works at aggressively chasing the target audience.

Educate them about Internet crimes to the likes of phishing, hacking & impersonation.

Most of the popular online games come with age-restrictions of 16+ or 18+. And regardless of that, they’re evidently addictive too.

Also comes the malice of forced ads that can be designed to manipulate really young kids into badgering their parents to buy an upgrade to an online game, or even stand the chance to be exposed to adult content.

While some cyber patrolling applications are available today, it’s first important that we, as parents, explain all of this to our kids about consuming relevant content online. Establishing a free-way to communicate doubts and transparency is more advisable than coming across as a spy sometime later.

Moreover, NEVER decline to listening to your child’s description of any online game that he/she has played, disposing it off with statements like, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand what the game is all about. Anyway, good if you’re liking it.”

This is a part of #CauseAchatter an initiative by Blogchatter.