Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Works for Me Wednesday #5

(Well, I'm going to be spending the next couple of days making this work for me....)

But this time of year, I wanted to pass the word along about this site called Homeschool, Inc. It's a FREE, SECURE online service that lets you create courses for each child and helps you do all your assignment planning and recording within each course. You or your child mark off completed assignments at the end of each day, and it automatically carries over assignments that weren't completed. You can record grades, keep track of which assignments are graded or ungraded and generate report cards and transcripts as well.

I was a test user back when they were first designing it. I honestly didn't do much with it that year, but I did ask a lot of questions as my friend (who works for the guys who designed the software) walked me through it the first time. Questions like: What if we spend the day on a field trip and don't do any of the assignments planned? Will it automatically move the whole schedule back a day?

Good question! she said. And so they designed it to do exactly that. I forget the other brilliant questions I asked, but they were rooted in real-life homeschooling experience--and my friend made sure that this system is as flexible as real, live homeschoolers need it to be.

It also has some amazing resources under the "Community" tab--take a look! There's a super-helpful article I just read about designing your high school courses with college in mind, as well as info on special needs, learning methods, etc. Homeschool groups can also set up an online connection point at this site.

You can order curriculum through the site as well, with no shipping on orders over $25 and a "gold star" incentive program.

I'm eager to use this with my older kids, especially, to help them manage their work and SEE when they're getting behind--not just waiting for me to do something about it.

Hopefully, it'll work for me/them!

For more "Works for Me" tips, visit Rocks in My Dryer.

2 comments:

SimplyAmusingDesigns.com said...

Thanks for telling us about this. I've been struggling this year with planning. It my 4th year to homeschool my daughter, but really my first with my son, who starts Kindergarten. So I've been having a TIME trying to figure out how to shedule this. I'll give it a try.

Mycrazylife said...

Wow. I never even knew this site existed. Thanks for sharing it!

~Hallie
Mycrazylife