Online School: A Great Homeschool Option

In my post, Home Schooling Observations, I refer to my daughter's online high school. Here's the scoop:

There are many styles of home schooling and what works for one family won't for another. In many cases, what works for one child won't work for another!

Sometimes the answer is not to provide the education from the parent, and parents who make this choice should not be rejected by or cause any concern among the homeschooling community. I understand that there are many deeply religious people who home school, but not everyone home schools for religious reasons. Although I am a Christian, a prayer minister and a Bible study leader, I took my daughter out of public school purely for academic reasons. My daughter couldn't get adequate help when she needed it (unless I checked in with the teacher to remind them every other week) and the behavior and language that was allowed in the middle school was unacceptable to me. I am sure that just about any other home school parent would do the same.

My daughter's high school is an online charter school, eAchieve Academy (formerly known as IQ Academy), and I have to say that the principal there is amazing.  The academic/guidance counselors have been an excellent resource for course planning and the teachers all offer extra help when needed (and my daughter takes the initiative to ask for it) and give extra kudos when children excel on assignments.

Capable public school teachers are now teaching my daughter, but the drama and inappropriate behavior she witnessed at the bricks and mortar school are all but gone (there's some dram here and there, they are teenagers after all).  She has made many friends through the online school, and she sees some of those friends in person regularly and - like just about every other teen - keeps in touch by texting as I communicated with my friends on the phone "back in the day". Her friends are not only local, but from around the state. Through the online school (which is paid for by my tax dollars and provides a laptop computer and books) my daughter is receiving an A+ in an advanced placement class and she gets extra help in other subjects when needed. She does not "fall through the cracks" as she did in the regular public school.

While we're beyond satisfied with this online charter school, there are private online school options and online/homeschool education options.  Start looking by Googling "online homeschool". If you specifically do not want to use a public online charter school, be on the lookout for those that misrepresent themselves as a regular homeschool option. And, some of these online schools cater to the public school sector as well as homeschoolers, but have to charge tuition to home schoolers. This is one reason why I decided to try IQ/eAchieve, which was formerly powered by K12.com (there's a new plan in place for academics starting next year with greater flexibility). Why pay for K12 when I could get those services through the public school at no fee over and above my tax dollars?

I started this post by saying that not all families or students fit into one homeschooling mold. Online education may not be for you or your child, but I had to mention it because the school my daughter attends is definitely challenging, yet I see her succeeding using this venue.

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.