Homeschool Skedtrack anyone?

[kamariden]

Does anyone use Homeschool Skedtrack? I know it doesn't really seem necessary with HOD, but I know a lot of us also add other things here or there (like a foreign language or extra science or whatnot). I've been tinkering around with it and I'm not quite sure if its worth the time and effort or if I should just use an Excel Spreadsheet or Google Calendar or ???? Thoughts?

[Tidbits of Learning]

I have not used homeschool skedtrack. I did try the trial simply charlotte mason planner. It was alright, but had a monthly fee I believe and was all web based. I do have homeschool tracker plus on my computers. I used it when we did textbook based learning. For a while, I kept track of attendance with it as well as extras such as field trips and co-op days. We have to school 180 days a year and we have to make a year's worth of progress in a year. I used to use a report card to show this progress and used homeschool tracker for this purpose. It also showed my lesson plans, schedule, and such for each child for the year.
I really don't need it now. I can use my HOD guide's to show lesson plans, schedule, and progress. I do like the well planned day planner. I really like it better than the computer based scheduling and tracking programs. I guess it is to each his own type of thing. I find it makes a lot of work to enter in everything that is already written in the guides for each child in the computer programs. I found myself spending hours on homeschool tracker just setting up all the books and such. With a planner, I can just sit as we go through the day and jot down pages from the books we are reading, field trips we take, and keep a progress report and report card without sucking hours out of my life and I save a ton on ink this way as well.
For me, it is a lot easier to use a pen and paper gradebook alongside my planner. I can add in their co-op and field trips. The planner allows me to have all 4 kid's school year documented in one place and doesn't require a huge amount of time on my part. I think it depends on your preferences (digital over paper) and your requirements for your state.

[kamariden]

Tidbits, Thank you so much for your comments! I found reading your thoughts and experiences helpful.

Personally, I nearly always go for typing over writing and digital over paper, BUT there are times when the digital isn't actually more efficient, even for me.

When we did HOD before, I used a very basic Excel spreadsheet that I printed out ahead of time and basically crossed off what we did as we did it. Unfortunately, I wasn't always great at keeping up with it and of course, it didn't really help with advance planning - something I'm finding necessary for making sure I'm not double booking myself and making sure I have a clear picture of what our month/year looks like. Around here we schedule family holiday celebrations months in advance (have to), so knowing EXACTLY which days we can afford to take off and still stay "on schedule", really helps. Plus, I just like knowing if I take today off, when is my next opportunity to add in a day? And I'd like to have certain extra resources assigned to be used certain days so that I don't continually wonder why they're taking up my shelf space or keeping thinking, we're going to get to that, but then never actually find the time to use it. I mean, does HOD need anything added to it? No. Do I like adding in extra stuff anyway? Yes. Cuz sometimes there are things we'd like to get more in depth with and, like I said, I have a bunch of random, GOOD resources sitting around that I'd like to see used. I have thought about getting an actual lesson planning book, but I've tried using the lesson planning sheets you can print off line with little success and I've never been one to fully utilize a paper day planner, so I'm afraid I'll buy one, try to use it, and then just wind up throwing it away in frustration. I'm a frequent changer, too. That's why I gravitate toward digital - less erasing and rewriting, not to mention easy copying.

[Tidbits of Learning]

The thing about the digital homeschool lesson planners and schedulers is that they are written and programmed by someone else that probably based it on traditional textbook grading and scheduling formats. It doesn't fit neatly into rescheduling and keeping up with all the books and such. It will not reschedule your whole HOD day neatly on out by the 2 page spread. It will try to break things up and squash them into the time frame that you have given for your school year. If you reschedule by a day it doesn't just move all your lesson plans a day forward, it divides each subject up neatly and mathematically and splits them all through the year. This is very frustrating if you have spent a week of your life getting the whole HOD guide set up and scheduled in your planner only to suddenly have all the units and days jumbled by a computer program that thinks it is helping you. You have to assign everything a specific subject and most of the time grades for it to show up on reports. They really are set up to work with a more traditional textbook only approach. You can add in reading lists, but you can't really account for them on a report card without giving a grade for every assignment.
You could probably keep up with math and language arts in a digital homeschool lesson planner such as skedtrack or homeschool tracker plus as well as your calendar, school year, holidays, and such. I found it to take an insufferably long time to get all of the books into the tracker and listed under subjects only to find that if I didn't give everything a number correct/number possible that it wouldn't even show up on reports. They really are not unit study friendly.
I guess if I were to recommend a digital planner that would work well with HOD while allowing you to keep up with extras and such, then I would tell you to check out the simply charlotte mason planner. During the trial time I used it,it worked well and I did not have the issues that I had with the other digital planners. The monthly cost and the fact that it was web based and not on my hard drive were the only down sides that I had. I have heard that the well planned day may have a digital planner soon as well. I didn't stick with the simply charlotte mason online planner b/c of the long term cost compared to a paper planner.
I would recommend trying the simply charlotte mason planner for your needs. If you don't like it, then homeschool tracker has a free version that I used for years before upgrading to plus.

[kamariden]

Wow! That sounds like such a headache! Thank you so much for explaining that to me so I didn't have to learn the hard way! Okay. Definitely ditching the skedtrack idea. Will check out the simply charlotte one, but cost is definitely an issue for us, too. May have to rethink my affinity for all things digital.