The software I am commenting on today is called Homeschool Day Book and the website is http://www.homeschooldaybook.com/.
Right up front, I want to state that this seems to be geared and marketed towards unschoolers. I also want to note that I live in Pennsylvania, and we have some of the strictest homeschool laws and requirements for what we have to keep track of.
I do not unschool (obviously), we follow a pretty structured schedule and curriculum. That being said, I still wanted to give this a try. Part of the reason is because I do not plan to hand any more information than I absolutely have to over to the school district. I do not believe my child's education is any business of overreaching government. Even though I will have tons of records and paperwork, I don't want to make it difficult for those who do not have quite so much by raising the expectations of the school district. Also, I don't want to get caught in a paperwork nightmare.
So, on to it then...
First of all, this is a very simply Visual Basic program. Clever actually, but it kind of makes me want to just go ahead and write my own to suit my needs. In fact, I downloaded VB myself and plan to do just that. Because of that, I don't really want to be super-specific with my criticisms ;-)
What I like:
It's simple, mostly intuitive and easy to use right out of the box. I really have nothing else to compare it to, but I have heard horror stories of homeschool software requiring 16 hours of technical manual reading before you can even open the damn program.
It does the basics and helps you keep track of subjects. I like that I can tie an entry to multiple subjects. For instance, we use Life of Fred for math and that is just as much (if not more) reading as it is math. It also helps you make some connections between subjects that you otherwise might have overlooked (our Spelling program covers 4 or 5 different "subjects").
It works for multiple kids so that you don't have to keep a separate sheet or book for each. Plus, if they work together on something, you're not adding duplicate entries.
I'll be honest that I haven't gotten into the reporting too much, but it seems nice and basic, while still giving you what you'd need (particularly to turn into the nanny state). It's nice that it opens a printable version which can also be exported and saved.
What I don't like:
I have to type the same things over and over, day after day.
I have no way to tie it into resources or book lists.
I can't figure out how to delete entries. I think really all you can do is open the entry and remove all the text, then save it. Seems like a real pain.
There is no way to log days off except to not log anything; this might get confusing because you might just think you forgot to log that day. Or maybe make an entry that says "day off" and not tie to any subjects, but I'm not sure how that would look on the attendance report since it seems to just check if there was an entry for the day.
Overall, this is a great, simple program that will spit out reports for you if needed. I honestly wouldn't pay for it, but for someone who finds it useful to their needs (unschooling, most likely), I'd probably sell something like this for no more than $10. The sticker price of $39 is way to high for the functionality provided. Writing stuff in a planner might be a bit more of a pain, but at least you can customize the info and no need to print it out! You're probably better off just using an Excel spreadsheet.
My method thus far has been to log everything is this homeschool planner (for the current year) and then add it to this program at the end of the week. It will work out good for me since I can print reports as needed (and won't have to send my whole planner or make copies). I really like the hard copy planner, it even has report cards and shopping lists that you can tear out.
We'll see what I can come up with on my own in VB. I have some great ideas. Maybe I can even add in some report cards and/or transcripts (required for high schoolers going to college!!).
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