Oh, thank you for this comment. It's good to know.

Hi All, Regarding the textbooks. . . Paul's high school Conceptual Physics textbook is not represented at Conceptual Academy. Our apologies. This arose as the site was originally built for colleges. It wasn't until later we realized that high schools would be using it too. For my chemistry book that was not so much an issue because it's already used in many high schools. Thus there is no high school edition of Conceptual Chemistry. We did have to scramble to get the physical science (CPSE) and integrated science (CISE) "explorations" editions represented. The CPSE course was completed just last month and the CISE is still not complete. That said, if you have one of the Conceptual Physics high school editions (with a roller coaster or Ferris wheel on the cover) I would be curious to know how that works? I think it might be worth a shot. The Conceptual Physics course at CA is organized by both chapter sections numbers and chapter section titles. The section numbers would do you no good as you try to follow the reading assignment. But you may be able to navigate well enough with just the chapter section titles. For example, Newton's second law. You'll find that in BOTH the college and high school edition. . . But keep in mind, that "high school" edition was targeted for the average 7th, 8th, 9th grader. Regarding the Integrated Science textbook, the ones with the spiral shell on the cover, there are two editions. Either edition would work well. Though, for the second edition, I was happy with my updates to the astronomy chapters. . . there's sooooo much going on in astronomy today. It's so cool. The recent arrival of JUNO to Jupiter! New Horizons passing Pluto. The Dawn now in orbit around that whacky asteroid, Ceres. The rovers on Mars. The James Webb Space telescope launch in 2018. And, of course, the total solar eclipse passing right across the USA on Aug 21, 2017. :-) Good chemistry, John

Thank you for expressing your concern regarding the new subscription model we'll be implementing soon. Subscription will NOT be the only option. Rather, it's an alternative to the one time payment method, which we'll be keeping. Actually, there'll be three plans, which we're calling Gold, Platinum, and Iridium (all precious metals of increasing density). The Gold plan is our older model where you pay for a single course with a one time fee. The new Platinum and Iridium plans are both subscription. They each provide a full site license for access to ALL of our self study courses. The Platinum allows for up to two student accounts. The Iridium allows for up to five student accounts. This provides a savings to families with multiple students. . . they won't have to buy multiple courses. Furthermore, each subscription can be monthly or yearly. For Platinum it's $19.95/mo or $129/yr. For Iridium, it's $29.95/mo or $197/yr. You'll see the annual subscription is significantly discounted as it should be. Also, if your student is not ready for our curriculum or for whatever reason, we can provide a full refund up to month after signing up. Even at these rates, however, we sense it's going to be some time before this site is self-sufficient. Please consider, our web developer charges us $135/hour. That's just the course management system. The actual content is another matter. Financially, it's not been easy building this resource. We appreciate everyone's support and understanding that what we're offering is college-level curriculum at a fraction of today's college tuition. As college professors ourselves, we are confident that our courses will provide a solid foundation in the content and nurture a level of enthusiasm that will help your student 1) enjoy learning science, 2 ) get into the college of their choice, and 3) do well in that college of their choice. As of now we're awaiting the advanced SSL certificate so that all financial transactions happening over LearnScience.Academy are secure. We've learned obtaining such a certificate takes a bit of time because of all the verifications that have to happen. Once it's in place, you'll see the https url along with the green colored secure indicator in the url bar. We're hopeful this will be in place by mid next week. Meanwhile we're still holding our older discounted prices. Please let me know of any other questions you might have.

Dear Beekeeping Professor and others, We're excited by the responses we've been getting to Conceptual Academy. The site has been progressing slowly but surely. For example, our physical science "explorations" course (grades 7 - 9) is now fully launched. In all we have 9 science courses up and running with two still in development. Importantly, we came to realize that we needed a support site dedicated to home schools using our resources. Conceptual Academy itself is a course management system, which means creating effective support pages is not a simple matter. Enter our new WordPress site: LearnScience.Academy. (I love WordPress!) Please think of LearnScience.Academy as the first step to learning about all the resources we now have available at Conceptual Academy. You'll find guidance on which courses to take and in what sequence, course descriptions, sample videos, testimonials, a detailed FAQ page, and a newsletter for hands-on science activities. I even started my own blog where so far I've been discussing learning strategies. I look forward to comments and suggestions for new blog topics. I should also mention we are now working on a subscription model through which a family will have access to all of our courses for a low monthly fee. Further, we've been working with the folks at eScienceLab to build lab kits that are customized to our courses. This subscription model and the lab kits should be available by August 1st. We'll be posting info about this at LearnScience.Academy. Please let me know if you have any questions. I would look forward to hearing from you. Good chemistry! John@ConceptualChemistry.com.

Hi Rosepetal, Thank you for asking about Conceptual Academy. Here are answers to your questions: 1) Yes, users of one of our self study courses need to buy the textbook separately. Our publisher doesn’t permit us to sell them on our own nor are we equipped to stock and supply them. They are easily found through places such as Amazon, new, used, or rented. As a follow-up, I should mention, the later the edition, the better. 2) There are many automated quizzes within any self-study course. Student results are compiled in a grade book. There are also 2000+ homework questions in each of our textbooks. Within a Conceptual Academy self-study course, there is also a major exam after each unit. This is a pdf document that the homeschool teacher prints out. Answer key is on the last page. Directions are given for a collaborative “pyramid†format exam, which is as much of a learning experience as it is an assessment for what has been learned. 3) Our physics and chemistry courses are primarily for grades 10+, though an enthusiastic 7th or 8th grader would also benefit. Perhaps I should mention that my “college†chemistry textbook was once assessed for reading level. The result was 8th grade, which made me smile. The language itself can be such a barrier. For my college students, the lower the reading level better. The concepts themselves, however, are where their mental powers should be focused. All this said, for 7th and 8th graders, I generally point folks to our “explorations†titles. Sadly, we don’t yet have our explorations self-study courses fully developed. The “explorations†textbooks, themselves are published. But the accompanying self-study courses still need our attention. That said, we do have the framework of these explorations courses good-to-go. Because people have been asking for them and because they have value (automated quizzes, for example, are running) we have them now offered at an “early release†price of $20. That’s for a full year of video lessons and quizzes. I hope to be beefing up these courses with FYI pages (From Your Instructor), worksheets, and unit exams over this fall semester. Thank you every one for your interest in Conceptual Academy. Please let me know if you have any other questions. You can contact me directly through our support page. http://www.conceptualacademy.com/support Good chemistry! John

The $30 registration fee is for enrollment into one of our customized courses. There are two kinds. Those created by instructors using our curriculum at their school or college. And there are also the "self-study" courses where we authors serve the role of instructor. We believe these "self-study" courses may be of particular interest for the home school. Each course has about 30 classes. There are no dates so the student can set his or her own pace. Each class comes with ample comments about the content from us authors, automated quizzes, and study documents, such as worksheets and chapter summaries. The classes are segregated into 4 to 7 units (depending on the class) with each unit ending in a "pyramid format" exam in which the exam is as much as a learning experience (involving family and friends) as it is a form of assessment. The self-study course is basically my college class (minus the labs) all within an affordable container. If we can get the support, we have plans for building social networking functionalities in which students can work together in study groups. Alot of what I do in my classes is "team based learning". It's a amazing way to help students learn, not only about the content but about themselves and how to work with others. I'm thinking this would be a valuable tool for home schools. I envision 3 - 4 students (not necessarily from the same area) working together online though one of these courses, organized through a homeschool instructor. Assuming broadband connections, there's much to this team-based learning that can also be developed for an online environment. We have our first module mapped out and hope to have it launched by next summer. Again, thank you for your interest. We need to reach a fair number of people to make this work. If the website, ConceptualAcademy.com, doesn't answer all your questions or concerns, or if you have suggestions, please write to me at John@ConceptualChemistry.com. I would look forward to hearing from you. Good science to you, John

Thank you Murrayshire for sharing this. I’m John Suchocki, textbook author and founder of Conceptual Academy. We’ve been working hard to make this site work well for home schools. In particular there are our self-study courses. Please check out our current course descriptions: http://www.conceptualacademy.com/node/42251 The site has just recently been launched, so we have only 4 self-study courses now up and running. . . just in chemistry as my co-authors are still coming up to speed. Each class within a self-study course has the means of allowing me to provide advice to the student, much like I do in my actual classes at St. Michael's College. I can also post documents, such as worksheets, chapter summaries, and unit exams. The system also generates automated quizzes based upon the content of each class. It’s really cool. I’m now almost done with the first Unit of each course. So I have a healthy head start over any home school students who might join presently. After all the effort of pulling this site together we are so hoping that we can get the word out to home schools. The self-study courses are most affordable (We built the site ourselves to keep it that way). And all our video lessons, outside of the self-study courses, are FREE. This evening my wife and I just set up our Conceptual Academy Facebook page and Twitter accounts. I have to admit, I’m new to those mediums. Thank you for “liking†Conceptual Academy, if you may, and for letting others know this resources. All six of our conceptual titles are featured. We now have 470 video lessons posted, mostly in physics, chemistry, and astronomy. More to come. Oh, please check out my astronomy videos. I spent the past year developing them. So much fun, I almost wondered why I majored in chemistry. Here's a direct link. Good for students of all ages: http://www.conceptualacademy.com/course/conceptual-physical-science/261-solar-system-and-its-formation I intend to post regular “teaser science questions†at Facebook and Twitter. I might as well post my very first one here: “The Sun lights up everything. The Sun is yellow. Why then isn’t the sky also yellow?†Good science to you, John