Homeschooling Companion App

[JFox404]

My wife recently started homeschooling our youngest daughter and found that there are very few tools for time tracking. This has prompted me to start design of a companion app for homeschooling. With that said I'm looking for additional ideas of things that others might find useful to have in a web-based or mobile tool. Below are the requirements we've come up with for the time tracking aspect of the application. Looking forward to hearing what other needs are out there and how I might help find a solution.

Time Tracking Requirements

• Parent access to setup classes
• Timer for child to be able to select subject/class and start/stop timer
• Parent admin rights to be able to override times
• Generate/Export reports on a quarterly/yearly basis

[Emily ZL]

Hmmm.. Forgive the question.. but why do you need such precise timing records? Is it for the state or to make sure the child is actually doing "15 minutes of piano practice" etc? 

[JFox404]

@Emily ZL My understanding is it's requested by the district office, so more or less for the state. 'X' Number of hours are required in certain subjects to get "credit". And 'X' number of hours in total is required for the school year.

That said. My goal is to put together a comprehensive tool for both parents and students to help manage the day-to-day aspects of a home school curriculum. Time tracking is just one small piece.

[Winter]

We just use Excel.

I went through all the apps and programs when we first started homeschooling and there were a few things that really pushed me to going with Excel:

1. It's free*

2. Most of the apps and websites out there come with a subscription fee so it's just more money out the door for something that really doesn't do anything beyond what we're doing already.

3. Many of the websites and apps were very basic and looked like they were designed in 2005.

4. They all relied on an outside server. When it comes to something as important as making sure we have documents (as our state is one of the more strict when it comes to homeschooling on what we need to keep track of), I wasn't about to put my faith into hoping they wouldn't close down or have issues with hosting and we'd lose our data. These companies don't make a whole lot of money I'd imagine so and I've been burnt before with things like that.

5. Excel is just reliable. I know there won't be any surprises with it. No sudden massive updates that change everything to "make it better" which will completely destroy the way it was before.

Now that's just my experience and not to say that others share my opinion but I figured if you wanted feedback on what some of us are doing, it was worth chiming in.

* You can use their web version for free. We do have a 365 account.