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Category: Parenting Tips

27th
Sep 2010

Job Satisfaction – The Key to Motivating our Children?

One of the things that most of us come across as parents – or teachers – at some stage or another, is finding a way to motivate our children in one particular area or another.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been spending a lot of time meeting and speaking to homeschool families as we have been promoting the benefits of our online subtitled educational videos, as a fun, unique and very effective online education solution.

I have been finding that as I reach the end of each working day that I am feeling so exhilarated, that I have not wanted to stop work. In fact after finishing working 10 hours, I felt so energised that I wanted to keep going for another 10 hours. And all I can put it down to is purely and simply one thing – that wonderful feeling of job satisfaction.

If I am completely honest I have reached a stage in my life where I have a desire to combine running a business, with at the same time doing good for other people, especially helping children. There have been a number of situations during this last week on which I have been able to give away a number of our 12-month Gold Membership subscriptions completely free to some very deserving children and their families. And it has left me feeling rather like Father Christmas. The gratitude, thanks and appreciation that have been expressed by a number of those children and their parents, has been totally overwhelming. In other words I have been experiencing a very strong feeling of job satisfaction.

I have had a few quiet moments to reflect on the difference it has meant to me to experience that job satisfaction, and it has made me realise that in trying to motivate my own children, that if I can introduce them to that same powerful feeling of elation in their own lives, then the motivation might actually follow automatically. (more…)


13th
Sep 2010

Learning Using Online Video …or A Spoonful of Sugar..

A spoonful or sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down…and so on. Who remembers that song?

If you do, you don’t need to own up to it …….. because of course it comes from the very popular Mary Poppins movie from years ago, and if you do remember, the chances are that you are nearly as much an antique as me.

Anyway the reason I’m asking is because I meet so many people that have not even considered for one minute using online educational video to help teach their children, and they virtually all have similar questions like “so what’s it like?” or “How effective is it?”.

And I generally start my reply by using that line “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” …… and here’s why! (more…)


10th
Sep 2010

Maintaining Childrens Attention and Improving Their Reading

I‘ve been reading a lot of questions on several Blogs and Facebook pages recently about maintaining children’s interest and attention while they are doing their schoolwork, whether it be at home, or in the classroom.

At the same time I have been seeing comments about problems parents and teachers are having with children’s lack of interest in reading. So as a parent of 2 children, I’d like to share something with you that has really helped us with our 2 children, in both areas – and at the same time.

We’ve found that using online video attracts the attention of the child and maintains their interest for longer periods of time, – in fact more than any textbooks we’ve ever used. It makes learning fun and they are more motivated to learn. (more…)


31st
Aug 2010

Only One Front Page ……and 12 different education stories.

I have to apologize for a quiet time on the blog for the last 10 days but we have a dilemma to overcome.

Since we launched this website, an increasing number of people have contacted us and explained just how many different types of students can benefit through using our online educational videos.

Zane Education (Zane Publishing Inc. in it’s former life) has had a well-established name in the school and home education markets since the mid 1990’s. And when we decided to convert our 250 educational CD-ROM’s into online video we always expected that it was the teachers, students and homeschooling families that would be our main customers.

However now that we are using the online video format – and most importantly that all of our videos are subtitled – we are seeing that many other types of students are benefiting from what we have produced. Those children include special needs students, gifted students, the disabled, children with dyslexia and reading difficulties, students with visual impairments, ESL students and especially children whose parents and teachers want to help develop their reading skills.
(more…)