Chances are, if you are homeschooling even one child, you are keeping some type of record of attendance, lessons, and progress. Just as there are hundreds of different ways to DO homeschool, there are a wide variety of record keeping methods. One very popular way parents stay on top of records is using specialized software geared towards home educators. One such program is the My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping online software, which I received a complimentary Annual Membership Plan for review.
About My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping
This record keeping software is internet based and can be accessed from computer, tablet, or mobile. It includes parent and student login options. Not only can you use this program to organize and track educational pursuits, but you can also track to-do items, events, home repairs, honey-do lists, meal lists, chores, recurring classes, sports events, and extra curricular activities. And it is 100% mobile friendly! All features work on any device.
Some of the most useful record keeping features are:
- create lessons/assignments once and copy to another student/class
- visual tracking of of attendance, hours, course completion, etc.
- transcript creation
- teacher’s aid to alert parent of any overdue items or missing grades, etc.
- reminder emails and QR codes
- calendar views including agenda (list), daily, weekly, and monthly
- a wide variety of customizable, automatically generated printable reports including transcripts and report cards
- member to member lesson sharing
- email & phone support
- walkthroughs and tutorials
- lesson rescheduling tool
- and more!
Our Experience
I was super excited to review My School Year software. I used to use record keeping software religiously and have tried multiple options in the past. I have been using a paper planner now for almost two years, so I was curious to see what this program offered.
Some things that I appreciated were that the reports included in the software are easy to customize and look professional. I appreciated the option to track chores and assign them as well. The ability to assign each student a color code is a great bonus and made viewing the agenda or calendar really visually pleasing.
While the features are wonderful, I found myself to be a little frustrated while plugging in test courses and lesson plans. The navigation is much different from other programs I have used in the past, and I found the lesson plan creation to be confusing and time consuming, even after going through the tutorials.
Another thing I found frustrating was there was no obvious way to bulk edit items without making changes to each individual item. To mark a day’s work complete, you have to mark each individual assignment as ‘done’. For the parent who isn’t tracking eery day, and instead wants to go in once or twice a week and update attendance and grades, this could be time consuming.
The other major feature I found lacking that I really would like to have seen was the ability to open an entire day or weeks worth of assignments for one student and quickly enter in grades. Instead, you have to open the screen showing all completed assignments for a course (and you can’t record a grade for an assignment until you have marked it as ‘complete’ separately), click on an individual assignment, then edit the grade and save. You must repeat this process for each individual assignment.
Final Thoughts
While this software has a lot of potential and great features, I found it to be unintuitive and time consuming. I mean, who wants to spend any more time than necessary tracking attendance, recording grades, and assigning lessons?
Sadly, I will not be using this software for the new school year and will stick to my paper planner, which I have grown to love. I really hate giving low ratings or negative reviews, but I just couldn’t find enough that I loved about this program to recommend it. The features are great, but the usability was a big negative for me.
But don’t just take my word for it, make sure you click the image below to read more reviews from the Review Crew blog, as many families enjoyed using this program!
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