Science Fusion? Love it?

[Hope in God]

Anybody using Science Fusion? Love it? Hate it?

 

It looks really great to me but I would have to go to great lengths to have it shipped to where I live. I want to know if it is really worth it.

 

Is there anything similar that people are enjoying?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Guest mom_2_3]

HI,

 

I'm new to the forum and actually joined for support on Science Fusion.

 

I bought this and am really disappointed with how difficult it is to get going. I can't figure out for the life of me how to allow the student to accesss it and assessments. For the last week, I've been accessing it through the TE. I guess it works but I still can't find assessments. I don't understand when to use the workbook. If I have dd go through the online lesson, it's too much to have her also do the worksheets. Ugh, I must not understand that, either. I have the pacing guide but it's not clear when to use the worksheets.

 

I wish it were more homeschooler-friendly.

 

If I had the choice to pick something else, I'd go with Switched On Schoolhouse. I would have stayed with SOS but, after 11 years independently homeschooling, I had to change and join a charter school (for various reasons). They don't allow anything from a religious publisher.

 

If you don't mind it being from Christian publisher, I highly recommend SOS Science. It's interesting and well-balanced. I didn't have to add 'extras'.

 

Hope this helps :)

[momma2three]

I, too, find it exceptionally user-unfriendly. BUT I am using the Kindergarten level, and based on the price difference and a few other things I think it may be different from grade 1+. I've heard so many raves about it from parents of older kids, I feel like I must be doing something wrong... but the K level is very poorly laid out and I can never find simple things like the Teacher's Manual, and I'm always unclear on what exactly DD should be doing.

[deanna1949]

You have the option of doing either the online or the workbook. What I dislike is that some topics that are covered in one are not mentioned in the other. We've basically been doing the workbook only (5th grade level), although if there's a concept that I think will be particularly tricky to grasp, I have DGD watch the online segment. I've not been especially impressed. Unless things improve, I'm quite sure we won't be using this next year. I don't think the cost is justified.

[Hope in God]

HI,

 

I'm new to the forum and actually joined for support on Science Fusion.

 

I bought this and am really disappointed with how difficult it is to get going. I can't figure out for the life of me how to allow the student to accesss it and assessments. For the last week, I've been accessing it through the TE. I guess it works but I still can't find assessments. I don't understand when to use the workbook. If I have dd go through the online lesson, it's too much to have her also do the worksheets. Ugh, I must not understand that, either. I have the pacing guide but it's not clear when to use the worksheets.

 

I wish it were more homeschooler-friendly.

 

If I had the choice to pick something else, I'd go with Switched On Schoolhouse. I would have stayed with SOS but, after 11 years independently homeschooling, I had to change and join a charter school (for various reasons). They don't allow anything from a religious publisher.

 

If you don't mind it being from Christian publisher, I highly recommend SOS Science. It's interesting and well-balanced. I didn't have to add 'extras'.

 

Hope this helps :)

 

Thank-you for the review. I think I will have a look at SOS. It had never entered my mind as a possibility before now although I had heard about it and seen ads for it. Can you buy SOS for just Science or do you have to use it for everything?

[Guest mom_2_3]

Hi,

 

No, you can buy individual subject. It's around $95 for one subject but you can try Homeschool Buyers Co-Op for a little discount.

[DarlaS]

You must (must must must) log into your teacher account and watch the Guides and Tutorials!! It's on the teacher desktop page lower right with the little movie clip icon thingie. Scroll down for flash tutorials. There are four. Watching even just the first two takes about 40 minutes and is time well spent.

 

ALL of my tech support questions have been answered doing this--and I'm only halfway through. It's NOT intuitive, so no matter how good you are at navigating websites, doing this is necessary. You'd think it a fairly simple thing to click, read and figure it out, but you miss important details that way. Like I had made classes for my two students, and even added them as users but did not add them TO the class! Very easy to miss stuff like that and that's just one example.

 

Remember, this was designed for classroom teachers to track multiple students working in many subjects at many levels in two languages. Until they develop a homeschool platform (if ever), watching these little video clips is as good as it gets.

 

And I am not talking about the demo.

 

Just had my 9 year old access his acount and under "Things to Do" was the quiz I finally figured out how to assign! Yay! I think we're onto something here. Only took me all month...:tongue_smilie: