Recordkeeping software programs

[NaturalMamma]

I'm interested in opinions on a few software programs for recordkeeping/lesson planning. You may have heard of them:

Homeschool Skedtrack --free and online
http://www.homeschoolskedtrack.com/H...isplayLogin.do

Homeschool Inc. PER (plan, educate, record)--free and online
http://about.home-school-inc.com/?page_id=68

Homeschool Tracker--downloadable software $49
http://www.homeschooltracker.com/

Edu-Track--downloadable software $59
http://www.contechsolutions.net/prod...s_pc/index.htm

I've been trying out HS Tracker (you can have the basic edition for free or the plus version for 30 days for $5) and there are some things I like about it. However, it has more items than I will ever use and it breaks everything down into the minutiae of HSing and, consequently, some things it won't let you get past. It's also very 1970's looking.

I also checked out HS Skedtrack and I like the look and simplicity of it. It's not quite as adapatable to my HSing as I'd like, but I think I could work with it.

I briefly checked out HS Inc. PER, but haven't learned enough about it yet.

Haven't checked out Edu-Track, but I think if I went that route, I would just do HS Tracker.

Right now I don't need to count every minute of HSing nor do I need to do weighted grades and such. DD is 10 and we have freedom in our state. So, for now I want something I can use to input my week's plan, then check off and edit what we've actually done. I want flexibility so that if we play Yahtzee, I can record that as math. (We're eclectic, somewhat relaxed HSers who use some curricula, but also supplement it with a lot of other resources like a LeapPad, math games, ideas from teacher's books, etc.)

When DD gets to high school, I would want to keep more detailed records, show grades and such to prepare for college entrance. (I could always change to another program then.)

Thank you for your thoughts and opinions!

[AngelBee]

I may be going with Simply Charlotte Mason. i am using HS Skedtrack, but I am having problems with the class times and getting it to adapt to multi students doing same thing but with different time frames or days.

Just signed up for 30 day free trial at SCM. It is 99.00 a year though. So I don't know...

[tankgirl73]

I use HomeschoolSkedTrack, and haven't used the rest... so I can't offer comparisons, but I can offer my experiences.

I like it. It's not perfect, in fact sometimes it's a pain, but it's free and it does almost everything I'd like it to do.

It's definitely designed for folks who need to go into all those minutiae, which I don't, but I understand that it's better to have "too much" for the sake of those folks who DO need it. It's well-designed for people who have to do detailed reporting for their state, for instance. And it should do fine for what you're looking for in terms of high school reports, etc.

But it can be flexible when you know the workarounds. If you don't want to track the time, just leave the activity times as their defaults and then ignore them. You'll get detailed reports of how many hours per day, etc etc... but you can just ignore it.

You can count whatever you want as "schoolwork", so if you play Yahtzee, just enter that as the day's Activity for math. You can set up Activities ahead of time, which I do for many of my older son's courses... I sit down and plan out how to divide up the chapters or lessons or whatever into reasonable daily chunks, and map it all out into Activities so I don't have to do it again later; but I can still change them. If, for instance, he only does half of what I assigned (either because he was lazy or because I'd mis-estimated the appropriateness of the assignment), I'll just change the Activity description for that day, and add a new one before the next Activity with the rest of what he hadn't finished.

If he does something that wasn't assigned for that particular day, that can work too. I can't do it just simply on the "Today" page, but I can go into the Activities lists for that particular course and put today's date on it as the date of completion. It still counts, even if it's out from the usual schedule.

For my daughter, who is just 3, I have a bunch of courses set up for her so I can remind myself of the different things we could be doing. I set the schedule for every course, every day -- but we don't do all that! Whenever we do happen to do something, I mark it as complete and it goes to the next activity in the list for that course. There's no penalties for not doing everything scheduled, it's just for convenience.

[NaturalMamma]

Here's another program that just came to my attention --

Homeschool Day Book
http://www.homeschooldaybook.com/

Looks pretty straight-forward. I'll have to give it a try.
Perhaps other moms here, even if they aren't currently using any sort of formal record-keeping, may want to take a look at some of these programs and share their experience (might take a number of days).

I'll admit, though, it's quite time-consuming to research and try-out these various programs. (My DH is a software geek and said he would gladly try to custom design something for me, but he did admit it would be time-consuming. And he's one to play things down so I just know I probably wouldn't see him for months as he buries himself in the computer. He would most likely never stop fixing it and the program would probably be done when DD is all grown up. )

When it comes down to it, I just want to teach my DD and have a semi-organized homeschool life. I don't need to plan an entire year down to each page covered. I have a general overview of what we're covering and draw up lesson plan details a week or 2 at a time. I want DD to know what to expect each week and be able to check off what has been accomplished and that would work better if I had it on a program (instead of my handwriting) and I wouldn't have to re-write some things that repeat each week.

[tankgirl73]

You've got me all curious to try these different ones now, try the free trials of the costs-money ones.

I started with the Daybook you just linked to above. I thought I'd like it at first... definitely very easy and flexible. But it looks like you can't put activities in ahead of time, or schedule things for particular days. It's great if you're just flying by the seat of your pants, or scheduling stuff on paper and just need to record what you actually did. But that's all it does -- records what you actually DID, and not what you're PLANNING to do.

If that's all someone needs, it's definitely very easy to use. But I need the planning aspect. So I'll try other ones next...

[NaturalMamma]

Originally Posted by tankgirl73

I started with the Daybook you just linked to above. I thought I'd like it at first... definitely very easy and flexible. But it looks like you can't put activities in ahead of time, or schedule things for particular days. It's great if you're just flying by the seat of your pants, or scheduling stuff on paper and just need to record what you actually did. But that's all it does -- records what you actually DID, and not what you're PLANNING to do.

If that's all someone needs, it's definitely very easy to use. But I need the planning aspect. So I'll try other ones next...

I worked on Daybook today too. It is very user friendly, flexible and has a nice look to it. But, you're right-- it does not appear to have the function of lesson planning, which I would like to have. For anyone who is (mostly) an unschooler, I think it's a great program for you if you'd like to plug in what you've done each day. I think it's worth checking out.

So at this point I'm mostly looking at Skedtrack and HSTracker. But some aspects of each of them don't work for me...particularly frustrating are elements where I am required to enter some data in a space, but I'm not interested in that data. But let's face it, the programs are not customized for *me*; they have to fit a general group of people. So nothing will be perfect. I just have to find the one that fits our family the closest.

Interested in reading more comments after others have checked them out.

[AngelBee]

I am overwhelmed with Skedtrack and SCM Organizer.

Apparently what I want to do is different than everyone else as I can not seem to get it to "work" how I want it to.

[Gem0406]

I use the Simply Charlotte Mason Organizer. I have used it for about 2 years. It is expensive, but the $ has been well spent for me.

This program is for CM style educators, so if you do lots of short lessons and do a lot of family work and a lot of read-aloud and reading as part of your lessons, this may work for you.

The most common complaint I see mentioned by new users is that you cannot print off the "schedule" a week or a month or a year at a time. This is just not how the program works. It works to tell you what is coming up next, and to record what you have done. I save each month in a detail record as a pdf to print out at the end of the year and bind as a record of our school year, in case I should ever need it ( or to be honest, I like to look back and see what we have accomplished - helps when I am feeling discouraged).

The input is easy as there is an isbn feature - enter the number and it retrieves the info for you - and a lot of cm type resources are pre-entered as well, you just search the database for them. The isbn feature lets me easily enter library books etc so all our reading is recorded in our records.

There is a lot of freedom in entering how you want the lessons to pop up in the daily plan - which child or for the whole family, which days of the week.

There is no space for grading, per se, but you could enter it as a note attached to an assignment if you wanted to - I don't really do grading so I don't know about that.

You can make any thing you want be an assignment, so if you play a lot of games like yahtzee for math, you can make a "math games" or "learning games" and check it off with a note if you like each time you play - then it is in the records.

So if this sounds like how you school, this program may work for you. It is working for me! There is a lot of support on the forum and there are videos you can watch to see how it works.

Hope this helps!
Gem

[heatherdeg]

Homeschool Skedtrack was absolutely a task to learn (for a few very specific things I wanted to do) but I DO really like it because we go on hiatus for a few weeks at a time and I can go back and pick up right where I left off. Until you either finish a planned task or mark it off, it kind of hangs in suspension for you. But I also have the flexibility of adding stuff that we did on the fly.

That being said, I don't have more than one kid of learning age yet. So I can't speak to educating multiple kids and tracking it. And once I got those few things figured out, I really didn't have a problem with anything else.

[sha_lyn]

I've used the full version of Homeschool tracker for 2 years and used the free version for a couple before that. I really love the full version. I too thought it had a lot of features I would never use but as DD gets older I find myself needing them. The most convenient function at this time is lesson plans. I'm also playing around with the transcript report to figure out just how I will want to input things in a couple of years when she starts high school so we can create transcripts to apply to college.

[nov05mama]

Originally Posted by sha_lyn

I've used the full version of Homeschool tracker for 2 years and used the free version for a couple before that. I really love the full version. I too thought it had a lot of features I would never use but as DD gets older I find myself needing them. The most convenient function at this time is lesson plans. I'm also playing around with the transcript report to figure out just how I will want to input things in a couple of years when she starts high school so we can create transcripts to apply to college.

Ditto all of this! I have had Homeschool Tracker Basic for about a year and just recently upgraded to Plus back at the beginning of August and I love it! It does have a lot of 'unused' features at the MOMENT, but they will come in SO handy in the future.
The reason I went ahead and upgraded, even though I won't use it all is b/c it's a ONE TIME fee. I won't have to pay yearly to own it, and it includes free upgrades for life. I can record everything from now until graduation, and it's all in one handy location. The transcripts and everything else will be SO awesome once the time comes.