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Scholaric or Homeschool Tracker Plus?


Murrayshire
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I have homeschool tracker plus....but it is so confusing and I don't want to spend hours upon hours trying to figure it out. Is it really worth it?

 

I've been looking at scholaric and it seems pretty simple. I would have to pay $3 a month or $2 if I don't use it for my ds 1st grader.

 

Does anyone have experience with one or the other OR both? Could you help me out?

Thank you!

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I found HST+ easy to use once I got over the initial learning hump. Try importing a lesson plan already done for you and see if that helps. I played with a fake database to figure things out. I can do just about anything in it, which I like.

 

I haven't really looked at Scholaric, so can't compare them. It's hard to tell what features it has from the website without doing the free trial. I tried some other planners before buying HST+, and the others were missing features that I wanted. So that's why I went with HST+. I find it very easy to use NOW, after spending a long Thanksgiving weekend learning how to use it. :)

 

Scholaric touts less features so it's simpler to use, and that may be all you need. Try the free trial and compare the two. Figure out what YOU need in a homeschool tracking software package.

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I found HST+ easy to use once I got over the initial learning hump. Try importing a lesson plan already done for you and see if that helps. I played with a fake database to figure things out. I can do just about anything in it, which I like.

 

I haven't really looked at Scholaric, so can't compare them. It's hard to tell what features it has from the website without doing the free trial. I tried some other planners before buying HST+, and the others were missing features that I wanted. So that's why I went with HST+. I find it very easy to use NOW, after spending a long Thanksgiving weekend learning how to use it. :)

 

Scholaric touts less features so it's simpler to use, and that may be all you need. Try the free trial and compare the two. Figure out what YOU need in a homeschool tracking software package.

 

Well, I did try the free trial but not fully. I signed up and looked around the site a bit...thought I'd go back to it later and didn't....then we went out of town for a week. When I finally got back into looking through Scholaric my free trial was over. So, maybe I can try to figure out the homeschool tracker since I do have it. Though, the simplicity of scholaric is drawing me in.

Thank you for responding! Any tips on how to jump into homeschool tracker without wasting alot of time?

Thanks again!

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I have both. Hst+ is worth it to figure it out. I loved it this year. I just signed up for scholaric bc i want something i can use on the ipad, i am also trying out HST online. Scholaric is more basic, but it all depends on whatbyou want it for. I havent yet decided if it is enough for me, but it certainly is a good price. Oh and the developer of Scholaric is awesome, so great atbanswering questions and working with feedback, i am fairly confident if you email and ask for another trial he will.

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Well, I did try the free trial but not fully. I signed up and looked around the site a bit...thought I'd go back to it later and didn't....then we went out of town for a week. When I finally got back into looking through Scholaric my free trial was over. So, maybe I can try to figure out the homeschool tracker since I do have it. Though, the simplicity of scholaric is drawing me in.

Thank you for responding! Any tips on how to jump into homeschool tracker without wasting alot of time?

Thanks again!

 

Watching the videos, trying things out in the videos, and looking stuff up in the manual and in their forums helped me. The hardest part for me was figuring out how to set up my subjects/courses/lesson plans. I finally decided to do major subjects like "Math", "Language Arts", etc. Then courses were fairly simple, like "Math grade 3" or something like that... sometimes it's just "Math" - more generic and spanning grade levels. Supposedly you don't have to do the courses, but there was some reason I ended up having to use them, and I can't remember now. :confused: Anyway, once that stuff was set up, I started making my lesson plans. I made one for each curriculum. That seems to work best for me. So for example, DS2 has "Singapore Standards Edition 1A", and then there is also a 1B version. I went through and added in 90 copies of lessons, then entered by hand the page numbers that go in the HIG. This didn't take horribly long, but does take some time. The thing is... in a couple years when I use it again for DS3, it will already be done for me. ;) (and someone may have done it already anyway, but I didn't think to check the HST+ lesson plan yahoo groups for it :tongue_smilie:). I deleted any lessons I didn't need (1A is not 90 lessons if you're not using all the tests). Now it's all setup. I've assigned his first week (next week), and I just took the first 5 lessons and submitted them. Oh, and I have our LP schedule set up for each child, and that way the lessons automatically go on the correct day, since some subjects aren't done every day.

 

Not sure if that helped or overwhelmed more. :lol: Just study the sections on copying lessons plans, using the grouping features, stuff like that. Those will be very helpful in entering your lesson plans.

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I am a huge scholaric fan. I spent hours trying to learn HST, and the learning curve took too much time. You have to figure out what works for you, but Scholaric works for my family.

 

I love the fact you can prefill in sequential lessons. You can select which days, and then type in a code. For example, First Language Lessons 1 has 100 lessons. I picked M, W, R for our grammar days and repeated 100 times by adding Lessons {1-100}. That alone is worth it for me. You can bump everything forward or backwards, or you can just drag and drop.

 

I also agree that the developer is very accessible. If you have a question, he will ususally respond within a few hours. He is constantly improving the program based on user feedback.

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Is Scholaric web-based? I can't tell from the very sparse website. No mention of whether a PC or Mac is needed. Anyone who uses it care to share?

 

Yes--web-based, Wi-fi needed. I have used it on both my PC laptop and my iPad.

 

There is not much info on the website. I found more info on the blog: http://blog.scholaric.com/ and also from searching for past threads on this forum.

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I am a huge scholaric fan. I spent hours trying to learn HST, and the learning curve took too much time. You have to figure out what works for you, but Scholaric works for my family.

 

I love the fact you can prefill in sequential lessons. You can select which days, and then type in a code. For example, First Language Lessons 1 has 100 lessons. I picked M, W, R for our grammar days and repeated 100 times by adding Lessons {1-100}. That alone is worth it for me. You can bump everything forward or backwards, or you can just drag and drop.

 

I also agree that the developer is very accessible. If you have a question, he will ususally respond within a few hours. He is constantly improving the program based on user feedback.

 

Cool! Thank you for your review of scholaric! I'm still wondering what to do....

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I :001_wub: Scholaric! It is really easy to use, and I can't imagine trying to homeschool without it. I've found that the simplicity of it allows me to change things (on a whim) quite easily.

 

 

I know with the online homeschooltracker you can make plans for each subject and then add it to your child's planner each week or however long you want to plan for. Does this make since? If so, is scholaric like this?

 

Maybe someone who uses the online homeschooltracker can expain it better.

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I know with the online homeschooltracker you can make plans for each subject and then add it to your child's planner each week or however long you want to plan for. Does this make since? If so, is scholaric like this?

 

Maybe someone who uses the online homeschooltracker can expain it better.

 

I'm not quite sure that I understand what you're asking, but I think Scholaric does this... once I have my plans entered, I can print a weekly or daily schedule. If we don't get to something, then I can either drag that lesson over to the next day or I can "bump" all the lessons in that particular subject over by a day, so that everything is scheduled out nicely again without having to double up on a lesson.

 

I don't know if that makes sense...

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Does anyone know if scholaric allows you to assign days off, vacations, or field trips so when yu automatically put in a group of lessons it will skip that day?

 

Yes, you can assign days off and it will skip that day IF you input the day off before you input the lessons. If you have already entered your lessons and want to add in a day off afterwards, you either have to use the bump feature, which moves every lesson back a day, or you can drag and drop the lessons for that day to another day.

 

For example, say you scheduled Lesson 1 for Wednesday, Lesson 2 for Thursday, and Lesson 3 for Friday, but later decide you want to take Wednesday off. You can bump, which will cause Lesson 1 to move to Thurs, Lesson 2 goes to Friday, and Lesson 3 goes to Monday (or whatever your next school day is). Your entire schedule moves back. Or you can just drag Lesson 1 to Thursday and double up with Lesson 2, so that the rest of your schedule is not disturbed. Hopefully that makes sense! :)

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I am a huge scholaric fan. I spent hours trying to learn HST, and the learning curve took too much time. You have to figure out what works for you, but Scholaric works for my family.

 

 

:iagree: I tried the others but never could figure them out. I'm new to hs but so far so good with Scholaric helping me keep track of what we're doing! I find simpler is better for me since my son is so young.

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