Do you use a program, such as Edu-track for record keeping? I'm looking at it and

[imeverywoman]

wonder if you have any experience with it, be it good, bad, or otherwise. Any input will be most appreciated!

 

Have a super day! :)

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

I have Edu-Track but found it to be a major pain in the behind. One more thing to do. I tried to use it in order to keep track of (and keep a running total of) grades. I found writing an Excel worksheet to be infinitely easier.

[Matryoshka]

I bought Edu-Track many years ago when it was the best thing out there (at least that I found). My kids were really too young for me to need it, and it really was a pain in the behind to enter things the way they do it. I quit using it after about 1 1/2 yrs.

 

I resisted even looking at anything else, since I already owned something, but as my kids entered middle school, I had more of a need to use something, but Edu-Track was still pretty much the way it had been. None of the promised upgrades had happened.

 

Then I finally looked at HST+. I am in love. It was worth the $49 even though I had something else. It has all the features that were missing in Edu-Track. If you're going to buy something, I'd go with HST+.

[razorbackmama]

I looked at Edu-Track years ago, but it annoyed me. Then I found Homeschool Tracker Plus. I've been using it for at least 5 years now.

[Alyce]

It's a great program but I don't know if I'd use it again. When I bought it there was nothing else on the market. One of the cons is that you can't use weighted grades. One of the pluses are that many company's lesson plans can be added to the program and lesson planning becomes a breeze. I've also been told the transcript looks more professional. It is expensive and like another PP pointed out they have promised an upgrade for several years now and it's never happened. I have heard various reviews about homeschool tracker. Since you can get a free basic version I'd try that first. If you like it you can get the more advanced version for very little money. If you don't like it then you can try Edu-Trak. I think a computer program is great because it keeps up with all the grades, subjects, book names, publishers etc, course descriptions can give report cards, has forms for grade cards, book reports, lab reports etc and at the end of all this it can put together a transcript for you to send to the colleges of your choice. It's all done for you.

[Matryoshka]

I have heard various reviews about homeschool tracker. Since you can get a free basic version I'd try that first. If you like it you can get the more advanced version for very little money. If you don't like it then you can try Edu-Trak.

 

I would not recommend this at all. The free version of HST is nothing like HST+, in fact it's a lot like Edu-Track. It's missing almost all the features that make HST+ so great and easy to use.

 

Spend the $49. Upgrades are free, forever, too! (with Edu-Track they are not). Also, HST+ also lets you import lesson plans from other people and there are a huge number available free online for all kinds of programs. Waaay more than Edu-Track has.

[Mouse]

Home school tracker has been wonderful!

[Hillary in KS]

I would not recommend this at all. The free version of HST is nothing like HST+, in fact it's a lot like Edu-Track. It's missing almost all the features that make HST+ so great and easy to use.

 

 

Seriously? I've been using Homeschool Tracker for 9 years now, and LOVE it. But I never bought the Plus version; I just have the Basic.

 

Hmmm.... I'll have to check out the Plus.

 

Thanks!

 

:)

[Guest academama]

I really did try to like Homeschool Tracker Plus, but I found it cumbersome (to say the least), unattractive, and useless. After 36 hours with it, I abandoned it; I can't ever get that stolen time back. :(

 

The many reviews of HST+ I'd found online seemed to be positive, so I purchased it. I'm hoping that by posting this honest account of my experience, I can save someone else from the stressful expense of money, time and effort.

 

HST+ is the least user-friendly program I've ever encountered. It left me stressed for days and I, wisely, ultimately stopped trying to make it work and wrote my own little spreadsheet which worked much more easily. If you're a person who can get this HST to do what you want, you can probably MORE easily figure out how to write a spreadsheet that will do exactly what you want, plus you'll have more flexibility; that's what I, ultimately, ended up doing.

 

Unless you have life planned to the minute, page, and ISBN (oh...and HST crashes if you enter an ISBN it doesn't recognize, 2/3 of the time) or, perhaps, you're using a prepackaged curriculum with a very specific plan, you will not find this program easy to use. You can't casually enter things and then rearrange them, on the fly. The separate sections, like lesson plans and daily schedules, don't work together nicely. My daughter sometimes reads 12 books in a day and sometimes reads one book over 3 days, so writing the ISBN and "pages read" of every book would have been absurd, but required. As far as academics are concerned, each and every item entered item requires one to check through an ugly and non-intuitive series of separate dialogs.

 

For someone who likes to record things instead of planning, anything entered has to be labeled by one, single category. If you have a half hour discussion about Mobius strips, Kandinsky painting on two both sides of the canvas, perception, and the shape of the universe, you will have to categorize it as either Art, Physics, Philosophy, or Astronomy (or *insert your choice here*) but none of the others, unless you enter the one conversation as 4 individual sessions.

 

The schedules are extremely time consuming to rearrange should you find that you have to do something unexpected, like run to the veterinarian or the grocery store. Or, if you are zipping through your lesson plans quickly, in order to start an activity early, one must go through all the activities above it on the schedule, one by one, and change the times. There is no drag and drop anything. The separate sections have inane names and acronyms in strange, unexpected places in the dialog boxes. The programming of the database associated with your plan appears to be flat file in a relational world.

 

The manufacturer will tell you that the "beauty" of the program is that one can use only the features needed. For me, it turned out, after almost a full work week of misery--watching videos, reading tutorials, looking at other people's pre-made plans, etc.--that Homeschool Tracker Plus had NOTHING I could use.

 

More power to those of you who have embraced it...I'm glad it worked for you. It was absolutely wrong for my family.

 

I can't be the only one who felt this way; I think we must be a silent majority.

[Lori D.]

Guess I'm just a paper and pencil kinda gal. Whenever I've tried software or electronic gizmos for scheduling, calendars, lists, etc., I never use it past week one -- always go back to paper and pencil. It's what works for me. ;)

 

Most classes don't really seem to need to have hours logged -- when we finish the math or science textbook, we've successfully completed the class. If we do need to keep track of hours, I just try to make sure to schedule the time in a regular way on our weekly schedule -- i.e., 30 minutes of PE on each of 4 days to get in our 2 hours. I just create a weekly schedule with boxes for DSs to check off work as they finish it, and save the 36 schedules in a binder for reference, tracking coursework, remembering what field trips, special events, etc. we did.

 

Some people have their students log their own hours using graph paper or create a form with say, 150 boxes -- the student writes the date every time they complete approximately 60 minutes of work on that subject. At the bottom, you could have a few blank lines to write down all the resources used for the course.

 

Other people just jot in a spiral notebook, each subject with its own page books read, experiments done, field trips, honors received, etc. Donna Young's website has a variety of printable forms to help organize / schedule / list.

 

 

Ultimately, it's all about what type of organization works for YOU. Are you a software person, a form person, or a "freestyle" person when it comes to organization? Go with what works for you and what you'll keep up with. BEST of luck! Warmly, Lori D.

[Hillary in KS]

I really did try to like Homeschool Tracker Plus, but I found it cumbersome (to say the least), unattractive, and useless. After 36 hours with it, I abandoned it; I can't ever get that stolen time back. :(

 

The many reviews of HST+ I'd found online seemed to be positive, so I purchased it. I'm hoping that by posting this honest account of my experience, I can save someone else from the stressful expense of money, time and effort.

 

HST+ is the least user-friendly program I've ever encountered. It left me stressed for days and I, wisely, ultimately stopped trying to make it work and wrote my own little spreadsheet which worked much more easily. If you're a person who can get this HST to do what you want, you can probably MORE easily figure out how to write a spreadsheet that will do exactly what you want, plus you'll have more flexibility; that's what I, ultimately, ended up doing.

 

Unless you have life planned to the minute, page, and ISBN (oh...and HST crashes if you enter an ISBN it doesn't recognize, 2/3 of the time) or, perhaps, you're using a prepackaged curriculum with a very specific plan, you will not find this program easy to use. You can't casually enter things and then rearrange them, on the fly. The separate sections, like lesson plans and daily schedules, don't work together nicely. My daughter sometimes reads 12 books in a day and sometimes reads one book over 3 days, so writing the ISBN and "pages read" of every book would have been absurd, but required. As far as academics are concerned, each and every item entered item requires one to check through an ugly and non-intuitive series of separate dialogs.

 

For someone who likes to record things instead of planning, anything entered has to be labeled by one, single category. If you have a half hour discussion about Mobius strips, Kandinsky painting on two both sides of the canvas, perception, and the shape of the universe, you will have to categorize it as either Art, Physics, Philosophy, or Astronomy (or *insert your choice here*) but none of the others, unless you enter the one conversation as 4 individual sessions.

 

The schedules are extremely time consuming to rearrange should you find that you have to do something unexpected, like run to the veterinarian or the grocery store. Or, if you are zipping through your lesson plans quickly, in order to start an activity early, one must go through all the activities above it on the schedule, one by one, and change the times. There is no drag and drop anything. The separate sections have inane names and acronyms in strange, unexpected places in the dialog boxes. The programming of the database associated with your plan appears to be flat file in a relational world.

 

The manufacturer will tell you that the "beauty" of the program is that one can use only the features needed. For me, it turned out, after almost a full work week of misery--watching videos, reading tutorials, looking at other people's pre-made plans, etc.--that Homeschool Tracker Plus had NOTHING I could use.

 

More power to those of you who have embraced it...I'm glad it worked for you. It was absolutely wrong for my family.

 

I can't be the only one who felt this way; I think we must be a silent majority.

 

After looking at HST Plus, I think the Basic edition is MUCH more user-friendly and easy to use. LEAPS AND BOUNDS of difference! I think I will stick with the Basic.

[Matryoshka]

HST+ is the least user-friendly program I've ever encountered. It left me stressed for days and I, wisely, ultimately stopped trying to make it work and wrote my own little spreadsheet which worked much more easily. If you're a person who can get this HST to do what you want, you can probably MORE easily figure out how to write a spreadsheet that will do exactly what you want, plus you'll have more flexibility; that's what I, ultimately, ended up doing.

 

No way would I have more flexibility with a spreadsheet. I enter the info, then it sits there. Nothing talks to anything else unless I spent years programming macros. Ew.

 

Unless you have life planned to the minute, page, and ISBN (oh...and HST crashes if you enter an ISBN it doesn't recognize, 2/3 of the time) or, perhaps, you're using a prepackaged curriculum with a very specific plan, you will not find this program easy to use. You can't casually enter things and then rearrange them, on the fly. The separate sections, like lesson plans and daily schedules, don't work together nicely. My daughter sometimes reads 12 books in a day and sometimes reads one book over 3 days, so writing the ISBN and "pages read" of every book would have been absurd, but required. As far as academics are concerned, each and every item entered item requires one to check through an ugly and non-intuitive series of separate dialogs.

 

I plan nothing to the minute. You don't have to enter times for anything. If you enter stuff into the Lesson Plan, it's not in stone - you can assign it today, tomorrow, next week - doesn't matter. You can decide not to use it at all. No problem. The Lesson Plans and Daily Schedules work great together - You plan in the lesson plan, then assign things daily or weekly. Don't assign things way ahead of time, that's asking for trouble. If you use the LP Scheudles, it will even assign things when and where you want them automatically.

 

For books, I just enter whatever books they've read on their reading list - drop down menu, takes two seconds. I don't record how many pages or how long it took, just what books they've read. If you're using a spreadsheet, you're saying it takes you less time to enter the book name and author than a 10-digit ISBN? You can even get a CueCat so you don't have to enter anything.

 

For someone who likes to record things instead of planning, anything entered has to be labeled by one, single category. If you have a half hour discussion about Mobius strips, Kandinsky painting on two both sides of the canvas, perception, and the shape of the universe, you will have to categorize it as either Art, Physics, Philosophy, or Astronomy (or *insert your choice here*) but none of the others, unless you enter the one conversation as 4 individual sessions.

 

Okay, I'll give you that one. I haven't bothered entering our worksheet packet (which has many different supplemental worksheets from different subjects) because of this. Meh. I don't have any need to record things that minutely - if I had that discussion, it would be fun, but I don't need to record it. And if you really wanted to record a conversation like that as four sessions, you wouldn't have to type it in more than once - just copy the record three times and change the one field. That's an issue with any database - very literal about fields, because that's how they gather and sort data.

 

The schedules are extremely time consuming to rearrange should you find that you have to do something unexpected, like run to the veterinarian or the grocery store. Or, if you are zipping through your lesson plans quickly, in order to start an activity early, one must go through all the activities above it on the schedule, one by one, and change the times. There is no drag and drop anything. The separate sections have inane names and acronyms in strange, unexpected places in the dialog boxes.

 

I'm wondering why someone who doesn't like to plan minutely is even giving such exact times. I assign times mostly to order things (like this first, that later) - I couldn't give a hoot if they actually happen in that order, or take that exact amount of time. If we don't get to something that day, I just don't check it off, and voilà it shows up on tomorrow's schedule again. If I've assigned it before lunch and it happens after - who cares? Times can even overlap - you don't have to change the times of the other items. Or, you don't have to assign any time at all to a lesson, and if you want, you can record it afterwards. Or not. There are two separate times anyway - the time you assign it, and the amount of time it takes - you can put in the latter without using the former. If you want to start an activity early (or late) - just do it - you don't have to tell HST about it - it's your servant, not your master. Are you recording things in that level of detail in your Excel spreadsheet?? Then why would you do it in HST+?

 

Sometimes I don't get to assigning lessons for a week or two, and then I just assign them and check them off retroactively. Works fine. World does not end.

 

The programming of the database associated with your plan appears to be flat file in a relational world

 

It's not flat at all - that's what I love about it. The Library for example - if I change anything on a book, it gets updated there - if I update it there, it gets updated everywhere. Basically anything in the Maintentance tab is propogated everywhere - and if you change it elsewhere, it changes the master file. However, I love that the Lesson Plan and Assignment Grid are two separate databases (data gets copied over when you assign), so I can mess about and play around in one, then put the final plans in the Grid close to or even after they actually happen. And if I decide to delete something from the Assignment Grid, the original is still over in the Lesson Plan. This is the feature that seems to be lacking in Basic and Edu-Track - everything has to go right to the Grid, and woe be to you if you want to change it.

 

The Lesson Plan is like a notebook you scribble plans in ahead of time, maybe with a page per subject or course or book; the Assignment Grid is like your weekly teacher's planner that you copy things over into so you can see what to do daily or weekly from many different Plans. Just like it would be a really bad idea to fill your hardcopy weekly teacher's planner with every lesson in every subject you're doing all year with times to the minute, it's a bad idea to assign lessons to the Grid any more in advance than you'd do it if it were on paper.

[Miss Marple]

This is my second year using the FREE homeschoolskedtrack for planning and keeping track of school stuff. Once you figure out how to use it (and the tutorial is helpful) it is easy to use. Did I mention it is FREE?;)

 

http://www.homeschoolskedtrack.com

[Joan in GE]

There is no drag and drop anything.

 

This is simply not true.

 

I have not used the Basic so I cannot say for that. But in the HST+, just go to the "agenda" tab where you see what has or is supposed to be done. You can move lessons here very easily. Just put the cursor on the lesson, left click and drag and you can move it within the day or to another day. If you put the cursor right on the start or end line, you can increase or decrease the time of the lesson with a simple movement as well.

 

Then all the times and dates are changed on the assignment page without you touching anything. Now, if you have already checked it off as "finished" and then move the day, you will have to change the finished date, but that is another matter. Also, it is hard to move it to another week. But it is very simple to change within the week.

 

I will say that occasionally there has been a lesson that I had to change which did not move. But I am not yet sure whether it was a lesson that came from the Weekly Planner or something else. Most of my lessons are from the Lesson Planner. But I've just put some in from Weekly Planner and I'll test my theory. (ETA - I've just checked this and it is not because of the lesson coming from the Weekly Planner, as they all just switched around easily).

 

I agree with Matroyshka's points.

 

About the lost 36 hours...I will say that I put in more than 36 to be comfortable with the program. But the thing is that the longer you use it the more shortcuts you find - like most computer programs. It is so much better than the papers that I had all over the place trying to keep all the subjects organized. It is so easy to find stuff instead of dragging out binders and baskets to find the papers that I put somewhere. I made all kinds of tables that did not have near the flexibility of the HST+.

 

If you want to use multiple sources in a conversation, there is the possibility of having an attachment where you can list the books for a subject like "Sumerians" and have more detail about all the different pages covered in different resources.

 

My daughter sometimes reads 12 books in a day and sometimes reads one book over 3 days, so writing the ISBN and "pages read" of every book would have been absurd, but required.

 

I'm not quite sure why you were having this problem either. For any program you would have to enter the name of the book with it's details. But once it is in the library, you should be able to access it as many times as you need it. It will be in the "resource" drop down list. What might be happening is that you do not put it as a resource for the course you are using it in. This sounds complicated but is not really once you see how it works.

 

Also, if your daughter is reading 12 books a day, is she in grade school? You might not be needing to keep track of all these books at that age. Or if you want her to enter an exclusive prep school, probably just a book list would suffice. You would not need to show that she read 12 on one day. They will see her reading level on any test she takes.

 

As far as academics are concerned, each and every item entered item requires one to check through an ugly and non-intuitive series of separate dialogs.

 

This means that you never used the Lesson Planner tab, or the copy button on the bottom of all assignments, or even the Weekly Planner. With those, the resource is copied to every lesson. Then under the page, lesson, chapter column, you just click right there and can change or enter the pages you used. When you copy the first lesson, you can have the pages, chapters or subchapters increasing automatically and still change them easily, without going through the "edit" button.

 

It would probably have been helpful if you would have had an experienced person by your side to show you all the tricks of the program. But they do have online videos which show some of these tricks already. There are so many easy ways of doing things, but the instruction book doesn't always help.

 

We've gotten more than our money's worth in only one year.

 

HTH,

Joan

Edited August 30, 2010 by Joan in Geneva

[Kim in Appalachia]

I bought it before HST came out. Updates have to be paid for, you can't change your school name from whatever you registered it as, if you're computer crashes, and you don't have the latest version of Edu-Track backed-up (which I did not), you can not reget the updates.

 

Overall, I hate it. HST is much better, even the free version.

[dani3boys]

Another vote for HST+. I've been using it for almost two years, and it has been a lifesaver for me.

[Mom22ns]

I won't tell you which program to use, but I will say that I love doing my planning and tracking on the computer. My Dh wrote my program since I'm on the Mac, but it does exactly what I want. I love to plan, to pull off supply lists, track hours (in MO) and grades too! I print schedules for the kids and they can record what they've done too.

 

I don't know which homeschool program is the best or does all you will want, but I know it saves me tons and time and keeps me very organized. It has been very worth it!