There are two routes to home schooling these days: the traditional home schooling route, where the parent takes on the role of principal, instructional designer, and teacher. For a traditional home schooling parent, the burden of designing a curriculum and lesson plans falls squarely on the parent’s shoulders. The parent has to decide which books, if any, to use, and what types of lessons and homework to give their child/pupil. There are a plethora of choices out there for traditional home schooling, but the cost can sometimes get prohibitive: when my wife and I started home schooling our third grader, we spent close to a thousand dollars for the texts and materials for just that year!

The second route is the virtual academy route. In states that allow charter schools, these virtual academies are often the choice parents turn to for home schooling, because the virtual academies are staffed by licensed teachers. In this route, the parent becomes a learning coach, and the child does the majority of their work online. The virtual academies provide a low-end PC, monitor, and printer for the student’s use, and both parent and student get assignments and instructions through the academy’s Learning Management System. Parents are free to supplement the material provided by the virtual academy with books of their own, or from the library.

For the rest oft the article, go to Apple’s iBooks 2 Gives a Bright Future to Home Schooling