How are you using Smartsheet to help you homeschool during COVID-19 closures?

Dana Esquivel

We've been celebrating the social distancing brought on by mandatory office closures and work from home has been great! Meaningless meetings have been cancelled. Chatty Kathy hasn't been stopping by our desks with distractions four times per day. We've been getting a ton of work done without ever changing out of our pjs! Until today, when it all changed, because my 10 year old's school is closed and I'm responsible for teaching him. 😬🤯😭 When we got this news I was not only scared about my productivity lowering, but terrified that I would fail my child over the next three weeks.

Then my brain sparked-- Smartsheet has always proven to turn problems into incredible opportunities so why not use it to guarantee my son and I succeed? I knew I needed a Smartsheet dashboard to keep us on track, hold us accountable, and provide us easy access to our old educational favorites. I also wanted to link to some new educational websites because I knew I'd hear a lot of "I'm bored" over the next few weeks. We put together our daily schedule in a Smartsheet, used Sheet Summary to gather some key metrics, imported a list of hundreds of free (or temporarily free during closures) from this website: http://www.amazingeducationalresources.com to filter and sort by topic, and we were ready for our first day. By 2 p.m. my son said he enjoyed today better than going to school (he's a school-loving kid) which made my year! And because it was all available for him on his Smartsheet dashboard, I still got a ton done!

How are you using Smartsheet to help homeschool your kids during school closures? I've attached screenshots of our dashboard and would love to collaborate with others! Share your ideas with the community so we can help support each other through this difficult time.

Request access to a copy of our homeschool workspace here: https://app.smartsheet.com/workspaces/vR7jh2qhPfVw5qfHJQcMXr8Qv7Pw486V7Vp3C4M1

Lada Gorlenko

Dana, you ARE a super-mom! The level of thought and prep is amazing. Thank you for sharing!

Here are a couple of other resources I hope to tap to with my kids, especially since our spring break travel is now canceled:

12 museums from around the world that offer virtual tours: https://www.travelandleisure.com/attractions/museums-galleries/museums-with-virtual-tours

Cincinnati Zoo offers daily Home Safari Live while they remain close: https://www.facebook.com/cincinnatizoo/

Glenn Clark

Dana - this is amazing!

Our kids are out of school for 6 weeks as well. Your thoughts around providing a schedule are key. We sat our children down “family meeting” style and discussed the structure of the next few weeks. It was important that we introduced this early with them (since they felt like they were just gifted a 6-week vacation) and helped them feel that they play an important role in the “team” schedule.

It is most definitely an adjustment for the children, but also for the parents. However, using well-thought out plans, dashboards and resources like you have above - will be a game changer for many of us in the same situation right now.

Thank you for sharing!

Dana Esquivel

Thanks for adding your thoughts and resources, Lada and Glenn! We did one of the virtual tours of a museum yesterday and my son loved it. And similar to your family, Glenn, we sat down and let our son help decide the schedule which was the best possible scenario. He's invested now because we allowed him to have input. Stay safe and healthy!

Jeff Chen

Dana, Great idea! How does your son mark off something that he has done?

This is something we are exploring for my teenage sons and also my wife: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ivy-league-free-online-courses-a0d7ae675869/ The Ivy League schools are apparently offering 400+ online courses that anyone can take for free. My younger son, in particular, is talking about learning to code and we have plenty of time right now to do that.

Dana Esquivel

Awesome! Thanks for sharing. My kiddo has been wanting to learn coding too. He started a course on Khan Academy today. To mark things complete he clicks on the “Today” report on the dashboard and then types 100% in the row. Happy learning!

Andrew Schleicher

I like this to, but I want a way to keep my personal/family items separate from my work account.

Dana Esquivel

Andrew, you could setup a free trial account with your personal email to use this for your kiddos while they are learning from home!

Chris Mozariwskyj

Wow Dana, Impressive use of smartsheets to help with the kids being home from school. I just sent you a request to receive a copy of your workspace. I'd love to deploy it in our house during these home school work days.

Tana Rucker

Request incoming on behalf of like a gazillion parents at SkyView Academy in Denver. THANK YOU for your willingness to share! You're wonderful!

Minnie Skinner

This is an amazing resource! I know parents and educators who would love this resource!

Derek Wilfong

It's still a work in progress but in the short notice of trying to manage a career and a child's education we've started a dashboard to help keep us on task. We are planning to add some links like Dana's above and some other helpful information. We also let our kids decide on the name and mascot of their own school. Not only will the children benefit from some structure outside of school but I get a little practice managing a live dashboard. To be continued....

Eric Demmitt

Awesome resource with the school dashboard, Dana--is there any way to edit it? Thank you!

Eno Oregbesan

Thank you for sharing! I cant wait to figure how to do this. Such a time saver and accountability partner! Thank you for sharing!

Miaenn

Here is an article and dashboard from my teammate, Shauna Wu. Hope this gives you other ideas!

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/66883/my-first-post-to-whoever-needs-to-hear-this-working-parents-we-got-this#latest