HomeSchool Office (HSO) is a web based program that allows you to schedule not only your homeschooling but also your daily home schedule and appointments. You even have the ability to print off schedules, attendance and transcripts! You can access the schedule via your computer, android or apple devices (only via the web, not app related). Not only can you track your current schedule, but you can keep track of your childs progress from year to year.
HSO operates off of a POWER acronym.
Plan- This is the section where you set up your goals and objectives for each student. You plug in their specific info like grade as well as how many hours or days they need to log for their school year.
Order- This is the area where you schedule specific lessons, detail what you want done when (down to the hour), spell out to-do lists (that have nothing to do with school even such as bill paying! And it's all printable)
Work- Here you can manage to-do lists and where the students can log in to check their assignments. If for some reason they didn't complete something, it can be pushed forward to the next day here.
Evaluate- This is the section where grades & and attendance are kept track of.
Report- This is the area where you can customize your reports. You can also generate transcripts, quarterly reports to include attendance, all in printable format.
When I first logged in, I went to the Team page where I entered each of my children's info. You can even personalize it down to your address, other teachers your children may have (such as from a co-op) and even your friends contact info.
From there, I admit it got overwhelming. There are instructions on setup and a place you can submit questions. Support abounds which is wonderful. But for our family, this planner was just too complex and way more than we needed. I was intending to use it for 4 of my children but it took too much time to implement it so I only used it for 1 child during the time of review.
HSO operates off of a POWER acronym.
Plan- This is the section where you set up your goals and objectives for each student. You plug in their specific info like grade as well as how many hours or days they need to log for their school year.
Order- This is the area where you schedule specific lessons, detail what you want done when (down to the hour), spell out to-do lists (that have nothing to do with school even such as bill paying! And it's all printable)
Work- Here you can manage to-do lists and where the students can log in to check their assignments. If for some reason they didn't complete something, it can be pushed forward to the next day here.
Evaluate- This is the section where grades & and attendance are kept track of.
Report- This is the area where you can customize your reports. You can also generate transcripts, quarterly reports to include attendance, all in printable format.
When I first logged in, I went to the Team page where I entered each of my children's info. You can even personalize it down to your address, other teachers your children may have (such as from a co-op) and even your friends contact info.
From there, I admit it got overwhelming. There are instructions on setup and a place you can submit questions. Support abounds which is wonderful. But for our family, this planner was just too complex and way more than we needed. I was intending to use it for 4 of my children but it took too much time to implement it so I only used it for 1 child during the time of review.
You have the ability to color code each of your children which makes glancing at the schedule easy when each of them is assigned a specific color. When you have a bunch of kiddos, this function comes in handy!
When building a report, you can select a ton of details to be included such as quarterly start & end dates, attendance, goals & objectives, etc. When entering grades, you have the option to choose if you want them weighted or not.
While I appreciate their Biblical foundation to report building and can appreciate all the options HSO offers, it just wasn't a fit for our busy family. For us, less is more. This program gives you the ability to assign lessons at specific times of the day but we are laid back and my kids do their work in no specific order so we couldn't utilize this function. I would've liked the option for a generic subject and ability to repeat an assignment after only being entered once such as "math" do 1 lesson a day as several of my children's subjects are assigned simply doing 1 or 2 lessons a day. I don't have time to enter specific assignments for all my children in all their subjects. But that is just a personal opinion. For someone who has the time to enter specific info and loves meticulous record keeping, HSO would be a perfect fit!
Pricing is $79 for an annual subscription. You can also try out a free 30 day trial!
No comments
I enjoy hearing from each & every one of you! Thanks for taking the time to comment. :)