Homeschool Planet
from Homeschool Buyers Coop
Subscription Rates $65.00 a year or $6.95 a month
My thoughts are interspered throughout the review in colored type.
Homeschool Planet is an online organizer for the homeschool familys whole life. It can be accessed on a computer, tablet, or smart phone. Access to schedules and information is determined for each user when their profiles are set up. These can be changed by updating individual profiles.
The main feature of Homeschool Planet is scheduling classes, assignments, and activities. This is done by setting up profiles for each student and classes or subjects. Basic classes are available to choose from in a menu and you have the ability to add your own classes as well. You also have the freedom to decide which days a class is scheduled for, it doesn't have to be everyday, it can also be a specific day or several days a week. Another option when setting up classes is to assign a them a specific time. This would be great for online or in person classes outside your home as well as if you schedule your day by time.
After setting up your classes there is a pop up box (access by clicking on the 'Edit' link at the end of the line in planner mode)in which to input assignments for each day. If more than one child has a subject there will be several tabs - shared assignments, and one for each individual child with that subject. After selecting who you want to give assignments to you can begin putting in the assignments. Simply type away. You can also add a web url to an assignment blank and it becomes hyper linked for easy access. There is also an option to add something to each class entry if you have something which should be done for each class. Here you will also find tabs for a notes section, a grades tab and hours tracking tab.
I love being able to add a web url. My children have used for website for supplemental sources because it is right there and I don't have to go searching for the site or bookmark when they are ready for it.
When setting up the class there is the option for giving assignments to one child or the same assignment to multiple children. I am not sure if you can make an assignment for several children without giving it to all without having to type it for each. For example with four children I don't know if you can make an assignment for child 1,2, and 3 excluding 4 without having to type it individually for the first three children.
A great feature is the ability to rearrange assignments with just a mouse click or two. In the scheduling window at the end of each assignment line are several options for rearranging in a drop down format. Simple click on the one you wish to do and the changes are made automatically without having to retype everything. Rescheduling can also be done at a later date. If you don't mark all assignments in some way on the day they are assigned when you log in on succeeding days you will get a pop up window reminding you there are unmarked assignments and asking what you want to do with the. This is easily done by marking the corresponding circle under headings like complete, move forward, don't ask about, ignore, etc. However you do need to make some kind of notation here before you are allowed to move any further.
I found this feature to be really helpful when my children didn't get to everything scheduled for a particular day. I could easily reschedule what wasn't completed. While I like the convenience of this feature I found the way some of the things are worded to be confusing and at the beginning had a hard time figuring out which option I wanted use. Things aren't described in the manner I was thinking of them.
Other activities such as chores, appointments, trips, and events can be put into the calendar and managed in the same way as classes.
Homeschool Planet keeps track of the number of days in a school year. The settings category has an option to note start and end dates as well as intentional vacation days. When these are all noted it calculates how many days are in the defined year. There is also the option to track hours.
This feature would have been great when I lived and worked in a state which required tracking instructional hours.
Homeschool Planet also has a grade recording feature along with the ability to create transcripts. For keeping grades the user has the choice of classifying work as homework, project, quiz, or test. When making assignments you can weight the type of assignment towards the final grade and Homeschool Planet does the calculating for you.
How Nice ! If you forget to grade an assignment one day you will be prompted to enter a grade the next time you log into Homeschool Planet.
The main display allows for user customization in several ways. You can choose a planner type view or a calendar view, whether you want to see a day, week, or month of assignments at a time, and whose schedules you wish to see. Next to each assignment there is a box for noting an assignment complete (click twice to have the whole square colored) or partially complete (click one for a half colored square). When an assignment is shared there is an option to show two boxes and then they are marked individually for each student. By selecting "add more assignments to this day" from the options in the window on the right side of the assignment input area it is possible to have multiple assignments for a subject each day with a check box for each. In addition users are sent an email each day when they have something on the schedule.
I like the customization options here. My oldest has email and browser privileges on her kindle so I set Homeschool Planet up so she can access her schedule for herself on her Kindle. For my younger child I choose planner style showing only his assignments and print him a hard copy of his weekly schedule. With 11 subjects it often ends up so that each day prints on a separate sheet of paper which makes it easy for him to see what he needs to be working on each day. This flexibility is great for my childrens' individual needs and stages.I just learned how to add more than one assignment per child per subject each day and have a seperate check box for each assignment. This will be extremely handy to note several assignments as well as to break down large tasks into smaller steps.
The daily emails are great for me. In addition to the daily schedule there is a link to the Homeschool Planet website. I love this link so that I don't have to scroll through bookmarks to get to Homeschool Planet each day.
Users also have the option to add widgets to their main screen. The widgets may be placed on the right side or at the bottom below the schedule information.Widgets to choose from include weather, to do, shopping list, daily quote, daily Bible verse, look up and messages.
I only have a few on my page, but I think these are just pretty neat. I don't text so some of them aren't applicable. However, the to do list and weather have come in handy on several occasions. The to do list even features a check off square which draws a line through the task. A great motivator to check things off.
Another useful feature is the ability to sync Google and other e-calendars among anyone who has a profile in your Homeschool Planet account.
I have not used this feature with my husband as he needs to keep a private calendar due to the nature of his work.
Homeschool Planet performs many functions for the busy parent and reading about all of them may have been confusing and overwhelming so I will try to summarize the many features. The toolbar at the top of the page has five categories.
- Reports Assignment lists, class notes, grade report, class hours, transcript
- Helpers Grading Helper, Rescheduling Helper
- Settings General, School Year &Vacations, Subjects &Categories, Grading, Track Class Hours, Share, Theme, My Account
- Help
Homeschool Buyers Coop offers a free 30 day trial of Homeschool Planet.
Concluding Thoughts
Homeschool Planet is one of those things that I don't know how I lived without. It has made planning school assignments so much easier. With Homeschool Planet integrating home tasks with school tasks is easier, because I can see all of them on one screen. This way I can schedule more demanding home tasks with lighter school days and vice versa to ease the too much to do and not enough time problem.
When I first started using Homeschool Planet it did take a while to figure out how to set up subjects or classes. So I ended up with some subjects having two assignment boxes, one for each child, and others with only one, with the individual assignments showing up in the same box. I am not sure if I could have gone back and made just one class for each subject without losing information I had already put in. In the end this isn't a big deal, but the uniformity would have made it easier for telling at a glance what was happening and it would have simplified putting in assignments.
Using Homeschool Planet for my course scheduling and planning is so much easier than a paper planner. It has made shifting the schedule so much easier due to not finishing assignments or something unexpected coming up. Since it is on the computer it is always handy and I don't have to find my planner or a place to put it. It is also so much easier to give my children their assignments. I am not having to rewrite everything in a planner for each of them or cutting and pasting on a computer.
Read what other reviewers had to say at Home & School Mosaics.
Disclaimer: I received a free subscription to Homeschool Planet to enable me to write this review. I have not been compensated in any other manner. All views expressed here are strictly my own.
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