I am not required to keep anything except for the year end standardized test but........I bought it for several reasons. I sort of "winged it" this past year with no formal plan other than what curric we were using for each subject and when we wanted to be done. We accomplished all the basics but I think we could have done a bit more had I been able to see the plans a bit better (like the days remaining in the planned year). It's one thing to see them on the calendar but to see you have 80 or 43 is another thing. I also wanted to be able to "reuse" lesson plans since I have 3 kids. Plus I would always procrastinate and being doing the kids list of things to do the night before or the morning of on a post-it note :lol: Add to that, I want to have it down "pat" before my oldest starts any high school courses for the all important transcript process. It is a bit time consuming to set it up BUT I can tell that once I've got all the resources in there, it'll be FASTER to click on things than for me to handwrite it on the sticky note each day (and I'll have a record of it versus the post it in the trash) and I'll be able to better see everything all at the same time (past and present). Since I have 3 kids and they're all younger (oldest is 5th grade), spending $49 (plus the $17 printed manual that I chose to add in addition to the free pdf file). $66 split by 3 kids to use for the next 11 years or so........definitely worth $6 per year. You can use it as much or as little as you want. At this point, I don't plan to use it much for chores or outside activities but mostly for formal school work but you could definitely use it for lots more. HTH
Yep, totally agree that Basic seemed a bit more time consuming than Plus.....one reason why I upgraded after on a day or two with Basic was because I wanted to set it up all at the same time and I could just tell from the online sample that it'd be easier in PLUS. Rhonda
Rhonda C - Thank you! This is exactly the type of feedback I was looking for. Greatly appreciated. ~Nicky~
I love the weekly planner. I have dd do computer time a few days a week to work on her typing skills & use of different programs. It's so easy to just go to Weekly Planner, choose which days I want her on the computer, how long her computer is, a start date, & an end date. Then, I just send it to the assignments & I'm done. No more putting them all in separately or putting in one assignment & copying it. It's options like that that it make so much faster to do things with Plus. My only problem so far is due to a mistake on my part. DD is using Rosetta Stone for Spanish. When you finish a lesson, it tells you how many were possible & how many you got right. I didn't write them down figuring I'd be able to access that info later. After you've finished one, though, it will only show the percentage you got. I didn't realize that. So, I had to have dd redo her work in Rosetta Stone, so that I had numbers to input into HST because it won't let you just enter a percent or grade. OOPS!
Glad I could help. I've debated for awhile whether to even download the Basic because I like to be organized but I didn't want to be militant about it. But after moving 3 times in 13 months, I need to be more militant for my personal sanity. Like I said before, all the kids got their work done and tested well above the requirements but I'd like us to do more "fun learning" and I want to be able to see that we'll also get the formal work done too. And I know my oldest will take at least Algebra in middle school if not another high school course or two......so might as well have all the kinks worked out before then for transcript purposes.
That's why I need the print manual. I'd have never found out you can send things from the schedule to assignments part on my own or with the stinkin' pdf file If you know the percentage, can't you just do 90/100 for a 90%? If you always just enter the percent as from 100 points, it'll work out to the same total percent. Just a thought.....but you can't then switch to the actual points, you'd have to use the percentage method the entire course.
That's a big part of I bought it too. We started out not really grading anything, I just wanted to see progress. In 4th we started doing grades, but only fo a few subjects. That was when I downloaded Basic. I want to ease dd into grading, so this year we're grading a few more subjects. She had a really horrible year the one year she was in PS & didn't want anything to do with education. So, I didn't want to do grades at first, but I also didn't want to spring them on her in all classes at the same time. With HST, I can plan everything we'll be doing but only do grades for the subjects we grade in. I decided to buy Plus this year because she'll be doing Algebra & high school Earth & Space Science next year. I wanted to be used to the program & know how to use all the parts of it before I had stuff that would be going on her transcript.
I thought about that & I might just go ahead & do that. I'd would be easier than remembering to write the actual numbers after each lesson, especially when she forgets & closes the screen.
Good to know I'm not the only one that Type A to want to work the kinks out :lol: I'm glad you mentioned the 6 year option for transcripts....not that she'll be doing any high school work in 6th grade, but its good to know I'd have to shift it to 7th if she was for transcript purposes.
Wow! THere is so much more to do wiht the Plus eh? I have mostly used the basic for attendence and recording at the begining of the year the daily schedules etc. Somehow I lost it in there and found it like 6months later. So that did not help me much, but the attendance was perfect for me! I kept track of how many days we did school, marked off the sick days etc, holidays. And it told me when I had the number of days I chose for my school days this year done. We went a little over that this year so that was cool! Ummm... I used it for recording things like feild trips etc, Contemplating dling the whole thing but with SOS I probably will just see if I can set it up with that.
With Plus, you have the choice of full day or half day with attendance. So, if you only do a little work, you can count it as a half day & still have it count toward your total days.
oo That is a good one on attendance I like that.. I am leaning to one side, after all ds10 has 6 years left, it WOULD be worth its $$...
WOW!!!! I'm so impressed. I ordered HS Tracker PLUS on Friday night or Saturday AM. They said they'd ship the printed manual I ordered and the backup CD-Rom via media mail so I figured it would take a week or more. I GOT IT TODAY!!!!!!!!!! That's like 2 days and it was media mail from FL to VA. WOOHOO!!!!!! Of course, flipping thru it I realized I may have to re-do some of the things I setup just because I see there might be a better way but who cares.....yippee!!!!! Rhonda
If you like Basic, Plus is even better. I just setup most of my courses last night. Still adding resources (which is optional)....then I get to start making assignments and lesson plans. It's definitely worth the $49 to have available for the rest of our years of homeschool.
Rhonda, what are the lesson plans and assignments pages like? I was a bit put off with the lists I had with the basic.. plus I had the hardest time finding them once I entered them... how has plus improved upon the looks of it?
Well, I only had basic for a few days so I'm not sure I can answer the differences. I do like the look of PLUS though. I just got the printed manual and I haven't really messed with the lesson plans part yet. So far, I've set up the kids, the grading scale, the courses/subjects, and most of the resources (except for the zillion SL books for my oldest). I have played with the assignments a bit but that was before I got the printed manual (rather than just the free pdf). hmsclmommyto2 could probably help you more since she has used it longer and more thoroughly. I like the looks of plus though so far with the weekly agenda, assignments, etc. Once you have the stuff setup, I should be able to click "like the wind" and have stuff assigned pretty quickly (or at least that's the hope). You might try looking at the online screen shots of PLUS and see if they can help answer the question. Rhonda
wow it IS pretty good, I may consider buying the plus version if I find I can't do all I want with my ds this year, I am using SOS for dd so it does all that stuff for me too ..
