Distance Learning Tips for the New Year

New year, new semester, but same old walls? We have some smart home solutions for that!

Now that distance learning has been going on for quite some time, we thought that all of you wonderful AV Design Consultants customers might be looking for even more tips on how to handle the situation. Keeping kids busy while also balancing the technological needs of working from home can be a tough act to maintain. 

As we begin the new year, finding ways to keep your kids focused and on task after the holidays and breaks can be especially tricky. We’ve put together a few suggestions with a tech focus, so let’s take a look at some ways to reinvigorate your family’s distance learning efforts. 

Workstation 101 

While many of us may have set up temporary workstations back in March or April of last year, it’s long past time to prepare for the new normal. 

This means actually taking some time to set up workspaces for your kids, but also for yourselves! Setting up a dedicated place to focus and work is important for everyone’s workflow. Especially with travel being limited, it can really help make it feel like you are “going somewhere” when you head off into a specific corner or room of the house to start your work day. 

Whether this means splitting everybody up into different rooms or getting dividers to actually divide space for everybody, depends how much space you have. But setting up a designated workstation for your kids to go to every morning and be able to close themselves off from the rest of the home is a great way to help them focus on their studies. 

Needy Networks 

When you set up your home network, you probably didn’t anticipate the demand working and learning remotely would have on that network. With the whole family at home, kids on Zoom classes, parents trying to Skype through meetings, and who knows how many devices all streaming music and videos and data all at the same time, it’s really easy for your home network to become the bottleneck for productivity.  

Upgrading your network is a great way to help alleviate this problem and make everybody’s daily work (and play) lives better. With an upgraded home network, you’ll not only have faster wireless speeds, you’ll also have stronger signal throughout your entire home, giving everyone the option to spread out over the course of their day and not just be confined to that one spot in the home with good Wi-Fi. Say goodbye to choppy streaming and video calls cutting in and out!

Getting set up with such a robust network requires expertise and may require professional installation, so that’s why we always suggest that you leave something like that to the professionals – like us! We’re the best smart home company in the area, so give us a call at 479-365-2201 today and we’ll be more than happy to help get you on the cyber highway to faster internet. 

Learning through Lighting 

Setting up a workstation is an important step toward keeping your kids focused throughout the day, but it isn’t the only way you can help make sure your kids succeed within the confines of distance learning. We’re especially fond of this solution because it makes use of an exciting and emerging smart home technology: smart lighting!

There are a lot of ways that lighting can help your family work from home. One easy way to get started with smart lighting is to set up a “school time” theme. This theme can be set to change the lighting in work areas to the correct shades and tones that promote good learning and focus – the lighting can literally give your kids a boost!

You can also set the light to change throughout the day, helping your kids feel like time is passing, even if they aren’t being exposed to natural light and are stuck in the same spot. Lighting can be a great but subtle way to help manage your kid’s schedules throughout the whole day, as well. Whether it’s setting the light to dimly wake your kids up in the morning, to letting them know when it’s lunch time, or even to help them stay on task throughout their evening homework schedule, smart lighting can really help your kids set and stick to a routine. 

Musical Maladies 

While distance learning may at first seem like an inconvenience, in reality it opens the door for some unique and forward-thinking studying solutions. 

For example, classical music is known to help people learn better. With your smart home system, you could set classical music to play during learning times, and have it distributed throughout your entire house with whole home audio. You can also easily control the volume from your phone, smart home touch pad, or other interface, making it easy to pause or turn the music down as needed over the course of the day. 

Working from home has been an adjustment for most, but we’re hoping that with these tips, it’s an adjustment that you’ll be able to make work for the whole family! But, if there’s one thing we know, it’s that no matter what issues you run into with your smart tech, we’ll always be there to help. Give us a call at 479-365-2201 whenever you run into issues or are looking to upgrade, and we’d be glad to do everything we can!