Your Child and Technology: What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know Part 3

Your Child and Technology: What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know

Fourth graders use the Internet, educational software, and other tech tools to build on core learning.

By GreatSchools Staff

Math + technology = more learning

Technology helps kids master math concepts with games and apps that illustrate more complex multiplication and division, as well as fractions and geometric concepts. A host of educational apps ask children to touch and manipulate math concepts on the screen. Math-based computer games transform rote drills into games that take advantage of gaming fever to drill facts into memory. Online animations and multimedia lessons can turn a math lesson into entertainment that teaches as it enthralls; they also allow students to review a lesson whenever they wish. And the Internet brings concepts and teachers — fantastic teachers like Salmon Kahn of Khan Academy(which offers hundreds of video classes on math, science, and other subjects) — into the classroom to inspire young minds.

Spicing up science

In an Internet-connected classroom, science is as close as the whiteboard, monitor, tablet, or computer screen. In fourth grade, children can watch close-up footage or animation of the human body, dinosaurs, space, or cells. They can play with animated versions of the elements in the periodic table or simulations of tornados or the night sky. Websites like Khan Academy, Brainpop, DiscoveryEducation, and The Jason Projectallow kids to access multimedia lessons and animations that transform science instruction into entertainment. And to help young students imagine themselves as scientists, the teacher can invite working scientists — virtually — into the classroomand let students ask researchers questions themselves. What’s more, students can even get an online lesson in computer science at Code Academy, where they'll learn the basics of computer coding. (Check out this story about why this is a good idea for your fourth grader’s future.)