morningcoffee Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) I know not everyone likes the time4learning sites but we did some of their courses during elementary and I thought their language classes were pretty good - not 100% perfect but on the whole they were comprehensive and well presented. Anyway, I'm now looking at doing a time4writing course for my dd (9th grade). I like the look of their course description, the format, the length of the course, the teachers' biographies etc but their response to a post on their facebook wall is making me pause. https://www.facebook.com/Time4Writing/?fref=ts It's their response to a comment made by "Hunter". I'm guessing it wasn't written by one of their teachers so I suppose I shouldn't critique it as a piece of writing (right?) but doesn't it seem to say that the parent is the one that should be grading or offering suggestions because it's a "curriculum" not a "school"? That seems to be the opposite of what their website says and opposite of what I'm wanting from an online writing course! I'm not sure if I will end up ditching my plans to use them just from one facebook comment but I'm now looking around for other courses. Any reviews of time4writing at the high school level? Any recommendations for something similar? Maybe write@home? Edited February 18, 2016 by morningcoffee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SparklyUnicorn Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I can't figure out which post you are talking about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morningcoffee Posted February 18, 2016 Author Share Posted February 18, 2016 I can't figure out which post you are talking about. I can't link to the comment directly but scroll down until you see "visitor posts" on the left. Hunter's comment is currently displayed as the second one ... click on the "1 comment" link in that box to see time4writing's response. In the meantime, it has occurred to me that whoever does the admin for the time4learning facebook pages got confused which page he or she was on and answered as though they received a comment about the time4learning curriculum.... that's only way I can make sense of it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saja1029 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 That comment was addressing both T4L and T4Writing. T4L is a curriculum. You don't have a teacher, receive feedback, etc. It is up to the parent to critique any writing assignments done through Odyssey Writer. With T4Writing you are assigned a teacher and given feedback for writing assignments. We only used it for two classes in middle school. The first class was the paragraph writing class. My son hates writing and he did fairly well. I thought a little too well. We then tried the essay class. Had a different teacher that took a lot longer to look at the assignments and a lot longer to respond to them. My son had a horrible time with the assignments. He was asked to rewrite everything numerous times. That was not the problem, it just seemed like he was really nit-picking and the assignments were just plain weird. He was getting nothing out of the course but anxiety so we ended up dropping it about 5 weeks into it. The two courses, and the two teachers were like night and day. I would not use them again. We went with Bravewriter Intermediate (online, not the curriculum) last summer and his writing has taken off since then. More expensive, but so much better :) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morningcoffee Posted February 18, 2016 Author Share Posted February 18, 2016 That comment was addressing both T4L and T4Writing. T4L is a curriculum. You don't have a teacher, receive feedback, etc. It is up to the parent to critique any writing assignments done through Odyssey Writer. With T4Writing you are assigned a teacher and given feedback for writing assignments. We only used it for two classes in middle school. The first class was the paragraph writing class. My son hates writing and he did fairly well. I thought a little too well. We then tried the essay class. Had a different teacher that took a lot longer to look at the assignments and a lot longer to respond to them. My son had a horrible time with the assignments. He was asked to rewrite everything numerous times. That was not the problem, it just seemed like he was really nit-picking and the assignments were just plain weird. He was getting nothing out of the course but anxiety so we ended up dropping it about 5 weeks into it. The two courses, and the two teachers were like night and day. I would not use them again. We went with Bravewriter Intermediate (online, not the curriculum) last summer and his writing has taken off since then. More expensive, but so much better :) ok, thanks for explaining that fb comment .... I get it now :001_smile: Thanks too for your review. Such inconsistency between teachers/ courses would be a big problem for us. I will have a look at Bravewriter. I'm actually seeing quite a few bad reviews for time4writing. It's a shame because it looked just what we needed. :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PinkyandtheBrains. Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 We have had a very positive experience with the brave writer classes. I've not heard much about time4writing. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julie of KY Posted February 19, 2016 Share Posted February 19, 2016 Love Brave Writer here. It's done wonders for my kids writing; 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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