Online Record Keeping

Homeschool Review Crew

My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping

It’s probably no secret that having a large family makes you be by nature a little more organized.  What might be a secret is that that does not mean we are actually organized!  I tend to be fairly organized in the home and farm aspects but homeschool can be a different story.  This brings about our latest review through The Homeschool Review Crew.  We have received the Annual Membership Plan from My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping.  Online record keeping is something I have fought for a long time.  I just did not want to do anything digital.  But here I am volunteering to try this out!

 

This program is a full year of online record keeping.  What this means is that all of our school schedules can be online together in one spot to help keep me more organized instead of in separate notebooks or planners like I’m apt to do.  Normally I do have several different planners and notebooks because we have so many children doing school and while I love to have them working on the same curriculums as much as possible, sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.  And unfortunately, not many paper planners include room for writing out days for nine kids!

About the Program

This online record keeping program is vast.  There are lots of how-to videos.  These are needed.  You’re going to want to watch all of these.  I found it to be very complicated to get started but once you get all of the classes and such added and in it is easier to work with.  The videos do a great job explaining things and teaching you how to use the program.  And if you’re like me and might have some questions after it all they have a great customer support system too.  

This program is still under active development.  What this means is they are constantly going in and fixing any glitches and making this program easier to use.  

You can add as many students as you need or want.  Then you can add as many classes/activities/chores as you want per child.  So you can in theory plan out everything from waking to making the bed, to bedtime.  I have not gotten this in-depth yet.  Currently, I’m scheduling things in advance for when we start school.  Right now I’m trying to get everybody’s dance classes in.  Whew.

At the top of the calendar, you can see all of the students and they are each color-coded to make knowing who is doing what easier. 

 

 

Online record keeping will make my life super easy once I get it all figured out.  I am so grateful that they have this amazing network of bits of help, hints, and videos to watch.

This program is mobile friendly and you can use it on any and all devises.  This means that you can have one student looking at their account from one computer while another is on another and you are on your phone.  No locking someone out so another can get in. 

My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping was recognized with the 1st place award for Practical Homeschooling’s i-Learn award as the best homeschool planner.  I can see why.  There are areas for absolutely everything from attendance tracking, transcript writing, and daily chores. 

There are lots of different sections within the program.  You have the calendar which is where I go first to see what is scheduled.  Next, you have an area called the Planbook which gives you what assignments are due that day, overdue or coming due soon.  Homeroom tracks the progress of each student. 

The Teacher’s Aid is another section.  It gives you notifications of things you need to do or that need to be done.  This area can get overwhelming when you have a lot of different activities or students.    I can easily have over 50 notifications at one time and we haven’t even started school formally this year yet. 

My Thoughts

Wow.  This is a lot.  Just wow.  I really have not even tapped into half the potential of this program.  It’s very overwhelming for me.  I’ve watched lots of videos.  And I’ve watched some of them multiple times.  Online record keeping is hard work for me.  It’s not something that comes naturally.  Really anything with computers is something I really have to work at.  Simple typing like these blog posts is about all I can easily do.  I have someone else design and maintain my blog.

So this is a huge learning curve and I can see this taking a while for me to figure it all out and know how to work it all.  For right now I assign classes and then lessons, but half the time I am having to reassign or cancel the lessons because I didn’t do it correctly.

I am currently trying to figure out the sharing feature so that I can share and assign the same class to multiple children.  This should make it go faster!

We have not officially started school yet.  My children have been doing a few hours a day through summer on some of the core subjects like math and reading.  This isn’t structured and so I haven’t been putting that in.  We are going to be starting school after Labor Day so I am scheduling classes and assignments for then.

 

 

I think this is an amazing program.  It’s going to take me a few more months to get it all figured out though.  This is not anything reflecting on the program.  Just a reflection on a tired mama of eleven kiddos with a fussy baby who knows nothing about computers.  

A feature I think we will be using is the student login for my older two who are doing high school this year.  They are the main reason I’m on this review.  I’ve been looking at the transcript feature because I know that is in my future and it’s going to take me all the years they have left in high school to get it figured out!

The Teacher’s Aid section drives me to distraction though.  So many notifications!  It’s a good distraction though as it keeps me on track.  Or it will once we’re really doing school.  Right now I’m enjoying this time to iron out all the kinks so I don’t go crazy the first day of school not knowing where anything is with the program.

I can see this program being used and enjoyed by small or large families.  The reports are professional looking and would not make me nervous to hand in report cards or a transcript as we go to thinking of applying to colleges. 

I love that calendar aspect of it.  This online record keeping is going to be revolutionary for me.  And, well, I just started using the calendar on my phone this year so at least I don’t have a lot of bad habits to relearn!

 

 

Having this to add in any appointments or dance classes is really helpful.  It’s also nice that my husband can have access to it and add in anything from his calendar that is relevant to our homeschool.

I highly recommend this program and I look forward to updating you with more about how we’re using it and what we’ve found once we’ve been using it for actual school in the next few months. 

The attendance feature is going to be my new best friend!  I have such a hard time with counting up all our hours for school recording for our state and this is so simple and laid out for me.  In love with this part.  Since we do school year-round but go light on everything but math and reading this is showing that we do spend roughly 2-3 hours a day on those activities.  So that’s the attendance hours so far and I marked us as doing half days.  We don’t have to count days, just hours for our state.

 

 

We are not required any days but I did put 180 in for our required days because the curriculum that my two high schoolers are using plans for 180 days.  So as I add that into their accounts I want to make sure that I schedule it that way.  

Learn More

You can learn more about what other reviewers thought by checking out all the linked up blog posts on the Main Blog Post over on the Homeschool Review Crew page.  Online record keeping may not be for everyone but you are bound to find some good ideas and tips to make it work for you if you’re wanting this program.  My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping can also be found on Twitter and YouTube.