Does anyone have any experience with Monarch? Specifically state history? All the research I've found is several years old. Reviews were not so good. It appears they had some bugs to work out & I'm wondering if 3-4 years was enough time to make it a good program. I'm looking for state history & I can't use the SOS because it's not Mac compatible. If anyone has any other curriculum ideas for state history, I'd love to hear them for high school (AZ).
I haven't used it, but I've heard that some states are better than others. Some were rewritten and are said to be better. Our state was not, and I'm told that it mostly consists of "look this up in available resources and write a report". It may give some info that is common to all states, and how that relates to federal government structure, things like that. But I don't think AO puts much effort into writing brilliant histories for all the states, because the number of courses they'll sell is limited. You may want to look into the Lifepac version and just use it as a spine for your own research. For my state history, i'm using public school castoffs, the internet, and some few resources from the library, with coloring books found at tourist-y places. Oh, and I got some children's books from Rainbow Resources.
I know someone who used the SOS version for NYS. She said it was a very intense course. She was using it in addition to her regular history (since we have to do NYS history at some point before high school per our regs). I do not think there is a lifepac version for state history though.
Well! Since I wasn't interested, I hadn't looked at it in a while. Apparently they decided it wasn't worth printing the Lifepacs anymore. I went on and looked at the Monarch scope&sequence for state histories, and the Louisiana one is barely worth it - a one-semester, one-unit "course". But AZ has five units outlined, with lots more in the outline. It might actually be a "course". The AO site shows lots of "updates" to Monarch over the last couple years. Maybe it's actually usable now...
SOS is now mac compatible. I recently did a webinar with them, because I was looking into SOS for their math. We chose something else instead, but all that to say, they are mac compatible
Lousiana's is a lot of research and intensive writing that is parent graded. Louisiana's monarch course was a lot to be honest. It covered a lot of topics and was a lot more than one unit it seemed to me. I bought it a few years ago for the girls. It had topic upon topic but almost all the assignments were essay style. It may not look like much from there selling site but it was a lot of assignments (all essay style too). I didn't find it to be very student friendly. It didn't really bring out a love of learning about your state or anything like that. If you want a get it done state study to say you have met a requirement, it will fill the bill. However, if like me you are not from said state then you will spend a lot of time reviewing and researching to grade your student's essays. You have it for 18 months and we still didn't complete it in 18 months b/c it was just essay after essay and you had to research a lot of it. I would look up a text that your state uses in school. Just google AZ State History textbooks. Add login to the google search and you often find teacher sites with the login for the e-texts. I wouldn't pay for the monarch state history courses.
Monarch certainly wouldn't be worth the money for us, and SOS wouldn't either. I would love to have a new resource (books, cd, websites) that would TEACH state history. I can assign essays and grade them myself for free....
