Lesson Planning and More: Homeschool Skedtrack

Homeschooling takes a lot of lesson planning, with reading, workbooks, online activities, field trips and other academic planning. I started planning on paper, and then created a spreadsheet to track hours, but still needed a flexible tool for daily lesson planning.

Homeschool Skedtrack Today Screen
IRT Web Solutuions

I tried three different online applications for homeschool lesson planning, all of which integrated a grading tool, report cards, transcripts and other helpful features for getting a home school organized. I found that Homeschool Skedtrack was the easiest online lesson planning tool to get set up, and after two or three weeks of use to get proficient with it, I'm finding Homeschool Skedtrack to be very dependable, free lesson planning software (donations accepted, if you're so inclined).

Homeschool Skedtrack was developed IRT Web Solutions, with the combination of over 20 years experience in Information Technology and 5 years of homeschooling. IRT Web Solutions intends to keep their online app free and guaranties, "by the grace of God, the continued availability, further development, and improvement of" Homeschool Skedtrack.

What I like about Homeschool Skedtrack:

• The printable reports are excellent for use as reference, or as documentation of planned or completed class work.
• Course activities that are not completed for the day automatically roll forward to next day the course is scheduled.
• My child/student has her own account so she can log in and get her lessons plans, and check off activities as she completes them (I approve her completions later).
• Flexibility for grading options, course dates, setting up days off from school, setting up field trips.
• There is no 'basic' or otherwise crippled version for a free trial. It's always free to try, free to use.
• Data can be exported, which I recommend doing every once in awhile to have a back up of plans.

My Homeschool Skedtrack wish list:

• Drag and drop for rearranging course activities (inserting and rearranging activities could take fewer keystrokes and mouse movements, in my opinion).
• A weekly calendar view, to reduce the need to click back and forth between calendar and lesson planning tools.
• A quick data export/back up tool that allows for downloading all of the Homeschool Skedtrack database(s) created by a user at once.  As a software reviewer and former network administrator, I am fussy about data backups.

Check Out Homeschool Skedtrack    ||   Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School


Shelley Elmblad has been testing software for ages, and writes for About.com Financial Software.  About.com is currently looking for a contributing writer at this site to cover mobile banking applications.  Interested? Apply for the job.