Info for unit study users
Michele Lewis
I am doing a completely independant evaluation of the homeschooling
lesson planning software available for a book that I am writing.
In the preliminary stages I have found that the top three homeschooling
programs, though they can be adapted to unit studies, are lacking in
this area. All three are EXCELLENT programs and each has it's own
merits but I personally believe they are better suited for those
homeschoolers using the tradional approach.
1) If you use Home School Easy Records, Home School ORGANIZE! or Home
School Record Keeper for your unit studt management, please send me an
e-mail detailing how you have adapted the program to suit your needs.
(Just for your info, I am gathering info from those folks that use these
programs using the tradional approach as well!)
2) If you are interested, I would like you to download a fully
functional, demo version of "Teacher's Planner" which is a shareware
lesson plan program. It is not specifically for homeschooling but it is
set up in a fashion that makes it very useful for those using unit
studies. I DO NOT WORK FOR THIS COMPANY! I am trying to do an
objective evaluation and I need input from homeschoolers that use unit
studies as I do not!
The writer of this program is VERY interested in making his software
more useful for homeschoolers as he never realized that homeschoolers
would be interested in his software. YOUR INPUT IS IMPORTANT! He would
like to know how to make his software more homeschooler friendly. I
have explained to him that they way his program is set up, it is very
conducive to writing lesson plans for unit studies.
Just to give you a brief overview; the program is "theme" based. You
start with a "theme" them base all of your lesson plans around that
them. The beauty of it is that you can catagorize each of your lesson
plans to a particular subject even though they all relate to the one
theme. For example, if you are doing a unit study on conservation, you
can have that as your main theme and then list your daily lesson plans
under Language Arts, Science, Social Studies etc. You do not have to
cover each subject each day.....it is very flexible.
Any way, if you would like to give it a test run you can doenload it at
http://www.pli.mb.ca/dawnbreaker It is called "Teacher's Planner"
Please let me know what you think about it and what changes you think
would make the program more homeschooler-friendly!
Michele Lewis
lewis...@geocities.com