Tip of the day: Reports
We have rolled out some new features in the Reports area and I wanted to let you know about them today.
— First of all, we made the report dates more intuitive. Instead of always having to select date ranges, we are giving you suggestions like ‘school year to date’ or ‘last quarter’. You can still customize your report dates by choosing customize in the drop down, but we think this is clearer and quicker.
— We are continuing to improve the aesthetic quality as well, including the print version of the reports. (We also made the print view of the schedule better.)
— For many people, hours are not as important as attendance, so we’ve added the attendance report. If you have a completed activity on a given day, the day is counted on the attendance report.
— Additional options were added both to the activity type, and courseware.
Some items coming up in our next iteration:
— Daily and monthly schedule view
— Make it easier to move activities around
We’re very excited about the direction the product is headed and couldn’t do it without you.
Update on our Myhomeschoolplan.com
I want to thank everyone again for really helping us improve the product over the last 2 weeks. With zero marketing, just twitter and a homeschool forum, we’ve hit 150 homeschooling families. And many have said they got the link from someone else so again, thanks! We are intentionally taking the marketing of this slowly as we wanted to get feedback and continue to improve the product before going to full launch.
The suggestions area is the most used area, with the forums and support emails trailing behind. Which is great, we love to hear your ideas and are implementing several as we speak.
So please continue to let others know about the product if you like, and let me know what you don’t like so we can try and fix it.
Introducing Tip of the Day
I created a new category that I’ll store these tips under, Tip of the Day. Of course that may be an overly optimistic category but tip-of-the-every-couple-days just doesn’t sound as good.
Today, I’ll give a brief overview of how to contact us and one other product tip. First of all you can always post a comment in the blog. We moderate comments so they may not show up instantaneously but we update as quickly as we can. You can also email us at support @ myhomeschoolplan.com.
Once logged in, in the upper right there are two links, one for forums and one for suggestions. The forum is a great place to post bugs, questions, or just general opinions. In addition to the blog we’ll post announcements in one of the forums.
If you have an idea or suggestion for improvement, use the suggestion link. We’re utilizing the terrific uservoice.com service for this and so far the results have been great.
So beyond how to contact us, let’s talk about Subjects. Subjects are the highest level of curriculum, such as Math, Science, Foreign Language, etc. (And, thanks to one of your suggestions, we added a couple new ones as well as an ‘Other’.) Within our Setup page, you have the ability to create Courses. Courses are a subset of Subjects. For example, under the Subject Math, you may have a Course called Algebra, Logic, Fractions, etc.
When you create a course, we require you to add a grade level. This allows you to view reports by grade level so you can see how many hours your student has spent on various grade levels, e.g. a gifted student spends a semester divided between 6th, 7th, and 9th grade level courses.
However, and again, this is based on your feedback, we’ve made a tweak that we think many of you will really like (in fact, we’ve already received positive responses.) Not everyone wants or cares about the grade level reporting. Many parents care most about getting things set up quickly so they can spend time teaching. So we created a grade level called Multi-grade. This allows you to create a course, then later assign an activity easily to many students without having to recreate the activity multiple times.
We hope little touches like this will make this an enjoyable application, and enjoyable experience for you.
Day two update
We had a great day in terms of all of you. You are using the suggestion page for ideas which is great, and more of you signed up. We did have some issues today and we are committed to letting you know about them on this blog.
We had two system outages today where you couldn’t log in to the site. We did some performance tuning and things are good again, but we are monitoring the system closely, and may close the system to do some maintenance this weekend. We recognize your time is valuable, and nothing hampers your experience like system outages. I apologize for this and will be as open about these things so you all know what is going on. This is a BETA and we know there will be bumps, but just because we are in BETA doesn’t mean we don’t take these things seriously.
One other thing, and we’ve had this planned all along, is that at some point we will close the BETA to new users, for a period of time to take your feedback and add some new features. We just didn’t realize how quickly we would get to that number with the great response from all of you.
On a positive note, we have incorporated 5-10 suggestions for improvements from all of you already (albeit small ones) and continue to tweak the performance tuning.
As always, I end this update with a thank you to all of you.
Day one of launch
Wow. And thank you. And wow again. The response today (1/7/09) has been amazing. In the first 2 hours we had twenty people signing up. But what has been the greatest part is how terrific you all have been. Within the first hour I was getting emails of encouragement, very constructive critiques and wishlists, and people were using our suggestions page (powered by uservoice, a great service.) What a wonderful niche to be working in with people as kind and encouraging as all of you.
Here’s the assessment of today, Clint Eastwood, spaghetti western-style:
The good: We had more people sign-up than we imagined. I’m not talking thousands or anything, but with no marketing, no advertising, just a blog post, twitter, and a couple forums, we got a great response and as of 3:00am the number keeps growing. The suggestions page has been used and people are emailing support, we even had people comment on this blog which is fantastic. I am proud that we tackled a couple major bugs that came up, and that we knocked out 4 requests by people today, ways to make the tool easier to use.
The bad: The forums don’t seem to be used, and I imagine it’s because it is easier to email or use the suggestion page. So I’m not surprised, and it is just day 1, but it validates what I’ve been thinking, forums are an area ripe for innovation and improvement. And, while I know it’s in BETA and it was our first day, it’s always disappointing to have bugs.
The ugly: The sign-up was down for a while. The great thing is the people who had a problem emailed or commented on the blog, and they stuck with us and signed up once it was working. That was it for ugly, it was a fun day.
I’m going to try to post several times a week with status updates, feature comments, or explanations about the product if I am seeing consistent feedback or questions.
Thanks again to everyone.
Announcing the launch of MyHomeSchoolPlan.com
I am thrilled to announced the beta launch of our homeschool scheduling application, MyHomeSchoolPlan.com. I am most thrilled to start getting feedback from all of you on how to make this a product that you are as passionate about as I am.
What is MyHomeSchoolPlan.com. Simply put, it is a web application that allows you to create, record, and review your homeschool activities quickly and easily. We want you to spend time with your kids, not your computer, so our focus has been on quick and easy setup. Create your courses, enroll your students in the courses and you are ready to create this week’s schedule. Are you someone who prepares your schedule a month in advance? Terrific, we have recurring activities and easy input to build your schedule as far out as you like. Or are you someone who creates your schedule the night before (like at our house, ahem)? No problem, we make it easy to enter tomorrow’s activities before you drop off to sleep.
Field trips, music, practice, assignments and tests all have a place in MyHomeSchoolPlan.com. Then, when you want to check on the the progress of your students, you can run a report to check on hours, or create a report card.
You can go to MyHomeSchoolPlan.com and sign-up for an account, it’s free. We’ll keep you updated on the blog about progress, new features, even issues that arise (and issues always arise in a beta). We have forums and suggestion areas to give you places to give us feedback too. And, of course, you can comment on this blog or follow on twitter.
Give it a try and please send us feedback, positive or negative, we have big plans for the product, but they always be centered on giving you time to spend with your kids.
Podcasts for Middle Schoolers
Let’s start with the basics in case you don’t know what a podcast is. A podcast is an audio ‘episode’ that you can listen to on your computer or download to your music player. For most, that means downloading via iTunes to your ipod. Many podcasts have recurring episodes so you can subscribe and get new episodes as they are ready.
Depending on your student’s learning style, podcasts can be a wonderful way to augment your lessons with your kids. My kids have especially liked history or science podcasts. One son watches video podcasts of Nova and other science related casts. My other son listens to history.
Here is a list of podcasts we listen to:
History of Rome – The author goes into great detail on each podcast and my son finds it riveting. He’s had some breaks in between podcasts but generally does them weekly or bi-weekly, and the podcasts last around 20 minutes.
In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg – These cover a wide array of topics from The Great Fire of London to Neuroscience to Dante’s Inferno. The site says it best: “The history of ideas discussed by Melvyn Bragg and guests including Philosophy, science, literature, religion and the influence these ideas have on us today.” These are usually produced weekly or bi-weekly as well, and run about 40 minutes.
Photo used from here with cc license
TPN :: Napoleon – The Napoleon podcasts, well you can imagine what they are about. The authors cover Napoleon’s reign in great detail. The podcasts generally run an hour or so, and the podcasts are updated frequently. Note: the authors often relate things that occurred during Napoleonic times to the current US administration, so if you are offended by that, caveat emptor, but I think it’s worth it regardless of your politics, they do a great job.
The History Network (military) – With military in the name, my son loves this one. It is updated ‘fortnightly’ as they say and the topics are usually about a specific battle and covers the battle in detail. Very well done.
Carpe Diem: put a little Latin in your life – This is an audio book that costs 8.95 and is about 5.5 hours long, but I’d be remiss not to list this. My son takes Latin once a week, and this book seems to be made just for him. It is not a boring litany of translations. The author tells funny stories with Latin tie-ins (including quoting a Monty Python bit) and then jumps into Latin lessons, the classic head fake.
All of the above are available on iTunes, but the links I’ve provided are to their respective web sites. If you have podcasts your homeschool students listen to, please list them in the comments.
Homeschool Plan Update – Coming soon
This fall has been incredibly busy for TexoDev and for Gomoll Research + Design (where I work as a User Experience Director). In the current economy, that is a terrific problem to have. The downside to the pace is that MyHomeschoolPlan’s launch has been delayed, but rest assured we are excited about our upcoming launch. We had planned on a traditional “first semester” launch. But we are focused on launching with a user-friendly experience and won’t launch until we have that ready.
This month we are making great strides and our plan is to beta launch in January, the 2nd semester. We’ll launch with a free trial period during our beta, after that you’ll have a 30-day free trial period.
During the beta we’ll give you the ability to set up your school, students, and courses. From there you can create your daily / weekly schedules for your kids. You’ll also have reporting available to you such as a breakdown of time spent on courses, as well as a report card.
We’ve got some great plans for down the road, but our focus will always be easily creating your schedule for you and your kids so you can spend time with your kids not your computer.
Over the next couple weeks we’ll dive into features and functions on the blog.
Mind Map Software Review – XMind
My daughter is a visual learner. She loves looking at maps, prefers looking at groupings of items for counting than flash cards, and takes hands-on art classes at every opportunity. When my wife teaches history with the kids, she does long timelines in the house, and with my daughter, she creates mind maps in a notebook.
What is a mind map? I like the wikipedia definition:
A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.
I decided to take it a step further and incorporate some technology with the mind map and see how she liked it. I owned xmind already, so thought we’d try it together for her science assignment on Wombats.
My one word review: Excellent.
Xmind has a very intuitive interface. I turned the controls over to my (now) 9 year old daughter and she got started right away. The interface starts you off with a topic in the middle of the screen. Adding sub-topics, and sub-sub-topics etc., is very easy.
The site integrates a browser inside the application, so you can perform text or image searches and easily move the text or image into your mind map. This was the highlight for my daughter, finding the pictures that she wanted to put in her project.
The tool has got deep functionality but that doesn’t get in the way of someone who wants to skim the surface of what it can do. When we finished, xmind gave us several ways to present the data: an image, a pdf, or, our favorite, as a slideshow moving from sub-topic to sub-topic. This project was everything you want a project to be, my daughter learned about her topic, she had to organize the information, she got comfortable with a tool that was not frustrating to her, and she enjoyed presenting the information to us because of the slideshow manner. We even emailed the image to grandparents for them to see as well.
I highly recommend this software for yourself or for your kids if you are, or have a visual learner.
Aqueduct Project
Last spring the kids studied the Roman Empire. I ‘suggested’ that a cool project for this lesson would be to build a Roman Aqueduct. Jenn said “that’s a great idea, good luck with that.” (The lesson, be careful about suggesting projects like this as ideas for someone else to implement.) 
So Will, James, Ruthie, and I dove in. I thought we would incorporate several lessons into this: Math (measurements), history (talking about Roman Aqueducts, which mountains they came from, what other civilizations had aqueducts), Latin, science (discussing what obstacles there would be to getting the water to flow), a little bit of shop class (cutting the PVC, connecting the pieces), and, later, the art of diplomacy (as we crossed deeper into the kitchen than we planned, a land we called Uz-MOMMY-stan).
We first determined where the aqueduct would go, from our upstairs shower down to our kitchen sink. I wanted to have my daughter involved, and she is a good artist, so she did the architectural drawing. We then did our measurements to figure out how much PVC pipe we were going to need. (Through all of this the kids were the project leaders, I offered guidance when needed but this was their project.) After trekking to the Home Depot we laid out our pieces and began making our cuts.
Each one of the kids took turns measuring, marking and cutting the PVC pipe. We ended up with a little over 50 feet of PVC pipe, several connector pieces, a funnel for the beginning and end, and lots of support beams. Unfortunately, I didn’t really think through how we’d support the PVC pipe, so as you’ll see in the following photos, we had to get creative (not necessarily a bad thing.) We improvised with ladders, rakes, blocks and anything else that gave us the slope we needed.
We worked on the top floor, tying the funnel to the shower spout. We had to work on the right slope in order to have it at a decent slope, not too fast or too slow. We also had the practical matter of making sure we could navigate up the stairs and across the upstairs hallway.
My oldest son takes Latin at a homeschool co-op, so we had him translate our signs into Latin.
As we moved into the kitchen, we realized we had to go further in than we had originally planned. So we made a game of it. The kitchen became Uz-MOMMY-stan, and we had to negotiate to encroach upon her borders. Jenn had fun with it and we had to make sure we compromised with her as Uz-MOMMY-stan was the country from which we imported our food.
When we were near completion, we tested with marbles first, then turned on the water. We had a couple leaks and worked that out with good old duct tape. This was an incredibly fun project, we learned a lot, made some good memories and it was a good way for me to get involved.
If you have done any fun projects, link back to it from your blog, or note it in the comments.