IsabelC Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 I have Heard Good Things about Homeschool Skedtrack as an organizing tool, but I'm frustrated with it so far. I have spent almost an hour fiddling about setting it up, and I still only have one child 'done'. I set the school year and number of hours, enrolled all my children in their years, set up courses, then it told me that my 4yo should be doing 8 hours per day, got that fixed, set hours and days for the courses... and after all that, all it will give me is a list of what one child should be doing each day, which is just what I entered. It doesn't seem to let me add the other kids onto the same course (do I have to make different courses for each child even though they're all doing mostly the same stuff?). I'm now confused as to what this tool is supposed to actually do for me? I was expecting that if I listed everything the kids needed to do and what times we have available that it would then tell me the best way to fit it all in (eg, do child #2's math lesson #12 at 10am on Wednesday, etc). But maybe it's more about producing weighted grades, transcripts, etc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Jo Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 You need to copy the course to the other students. One at a time. It's just built to deal with one student at a time. If you don't care about grades, you could make a "student" named family and put your group stuff there. Or just use Skedtrack for individual work, and record family work elsewhere. I'm now confused as to what this tool is supposed to actually do for me? It will basically take your subject plans, and feed them into a daily or weekly schedule for you to print and/or check off as done. It will let you reuse the subject plans for another child. It will automatically roll any incomplete assignments to the next day. And you can print a professional looking page of either your plans or the things you have accomplished. I was expecting that if I listed everything the kids needed to do and what times we have available that it would then tell me the best way to fit it all in (eg, do child #2's math lesson #12 at 10am on Wednesday, etc). I don't think any program will do that. HST+ will do a schedule grid, but it will only spit out what you enter - you'll have to figure out the best time to do math. I wish there was a program you could enter raw data into and it would make a schedule. I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I've been beating my head on the sane scheduling wall for weeks now. :glare: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatholicMom Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 FWIW, I hated Skedtrak. The program seems like it was made in about 1992 in terms of look, efficiency, and use-friendliness. Basically, you can tell it's free. If you're going to bother with all the input, I would use a higher quality program. You can get a trial of HST+ that is under 10 bucks so you could at least see if it's for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NittanyJen Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 If you have a Mac, you can try Olly. They will have an iPad app out soon, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErinD Posted September 16, 2012 Share Posted September 16, 2012 Skedtrack drove me crazy (-ier?)! This school year I've been using Scholaric.com...there's a free trial period of about a month and then it's $2 a month. I'm happy to pay the $2 to have a planner that works well, is easy to use, and isn't counterintuitive! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsabelC Posted September 20, 2012 Author Share Posted September 20, 2012 Thanks for all the suggestions :001_smile: I decided to stick with Skedtrack, because I'm a tightwad, and because I don't need advanced capabilities for tracking attendance hours, grades and whatnot, but mainly because I have now spent hours and I'm just not willing to enter all the info all over again. Apart from a slight clumsiness to the program, I'm used to it now I've spent a bit more time with it. I figured out how to copy bits of program from one child to the other. The only thing that's slightly annoying is that it doesn't seem to be able to record inter-subject dependencies (eg, I have deliberately put reader #23 for phonics on the same day that grammar will include questions about that story - then I intersperse some other reading, and suddenly I have to manually rejig the whole grammar course to make it match up again). It's taken AGES but actually been really useful. I've never scheduled out a whole term in detail for everything before, and it's forced me to clean out all our resources and make decisions about exactly what we can / want to get through. Excess books have been either removed or bumped to next year, instead of sitting there making me feel guilty because "why might use that at some point". I have cleaned out the kids' file drawers so they can easily find everything on their schedules, and worked out what things I still need to print out or otherwise prepare. I feel super organized and more than a little smug now :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwickimom Posted September 20, 2012 Share Posted September 20, 2012 Skedtrack drove me crazy (-ier?)! This school year I've been using Scholaric.com...there's a free trial period of about a month and then it's $2 a month. I'm happy to pay the $2 to have a planner that works well, is easy to use, and isn't counterintuitive! :iagree: This is the easiest scheduling program there is. Simple, cheap, and you can bump things forward and back and share subjects. Love it. I am cheap too but the $2 a month is so worth the time I wasted trying out other programs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsabelC Posted September 21, 2012 Author Share Posted September 21, 2012 :iagree: This is the easiest scheduling program there is. Simple, cheap, and you can bump things forward and back and share subjects. Love it. I am cheap too but the $2 a month is so worth the time I wasted trying out other programs. I might try it out when I do our new schedule for February. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krorabaugh Posted September 21, 2012 Share Posted September 21, 2012 I haven't tried it - it sounds really useful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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