What's different about Version 1

What's different about Version 1.0 Beta 1:

Duplicating & moving dialogue box is more reliable & intuitive.

Highlights appear over current & selected lessons in Template & Lesson Planning. (Wendy's favorite change!)

New Booklist options include an expanded list showing publisher & description. Also, more ways to sort your booklists.

Chores can be duplicated one or all to other kids. (Note that the chores list just hates it when a person leaves a blank space anywhere in it.)

Preference choices have been expanded, including the choice of Monday or Sunday for start of Calendar week.

Transcript generates itself automatically from your logged lessons, after you have generated a Grade Report (even non-graders will need to generate a Grade Report so that it will total your hours). It lists credits, and grades or logged hours for ungraded subjects.

Grade Level is a new item in Set Up, School Year, that allows the Transcript to identify the Grade a child was in during each year.

Teacher's List can be created, which you may want to attach to a transcript. Note the new space for a teacher's "Organization" name, e.g.: "Grace Athletic Club" or "Jay's Music Studio" in Set Up under Teachers.

Archiving! This quick process will move last year's lessons out of your tables into a safe place, where they will continue to be saved any time you back up your data.

Data Back-up!
Two-button back-up is easy. No more excuses for not backing up your data! Two-button restore is coming soon.

New % to tell how you did with hours just for that month has been added by customer request.

Lesson Plans can be printed without the 2 Blank Lessons at the end. When you select "Print" it will ask your preference and keep it, until you change it.

For those of you using the Menu, the new items have been added to the Menu under either "Lessons" or "Reports". "Preferences" & "Chores" are now listed under "Homeschool".

Thousands of "bugs" stomped out with your help!

Dozens of new "bugs" hidden for you to find -- just kidding, we hope!

Leftover annoyances:

The lock-up villain, most often encountered in the Book and Assignment boxes of Lesson Planning/Template, has not yet been driven out. He is an elusive little devil, and we would appreciate any ideas on exactly what triggers him or where he comes from.

In the meantime, I have learned a new way to mitigate his annoyance. When you realized you're locked up:

-highlight the new Book or Assignment that you've just typed in (don't use the shortcut "Control" "a" on your keyboard, it gets upset for some reason.)

-copy it (can use the shortcut is "Control" "c" on your keyboard)

-tap "Escape" three times

-paste your new text over the "reappeared" old text (can use the shortcut "Control" "v" on your keyboard)

It still will not calculate grades for summer vacation months (unless you school all year round and have your first day of classes set at 7/1). Although it is tempting to move your first day of classes back to 7/1, when you are actually planning to start serious work on 9/1, I don't recommend it, because in the monthly summary of hours reports your "anticipated achieved hours" and your %'s will be messed up, believing that you've got extra months to achieve your hours. Hopefully, summer grades won't be an issue for most of you.

There is no apparent way to change the program to produce grades for months that are not included in your "going-full-blast school year". If you are anxious to get summer vacation grades, it might be possible to begin your school year on July 1^st and end it on June 30^th. Then, in "Set Up" "Set Up" "School Year" identify 21 - 24 days off for vacation days in June, July and/or August, so that your %'s in the Monthly Summary of Hours isn't thrown off. That's just a theory; I haven't tried it. If you do, let me know how it works

How to use the New Features:

Duplicating & Moving Dialogue Box:

You can now select the same student in the left & right boxes without a hitch. Read the prompts for more advice about how to use the various options. I always recheck all my selections before I press the "OK" button, just to be safe. The defaults are designed to make it ridiculously easy to copy a week’s worth of lessons for all students from the Template to the Lesson Plans table, and to copy or move individual lessons around in the Lesson Plans table.

Highlights:

The lesson on which you are working in the dialogue box will be highlighted by green in the table. A lesson selected by the check-off boxes in the table will show up yellow (or yellow & green for a selected lesson currently showing in the dialogue box). You don’t need to do anything, just enjoy how much easier it is to tell what you're doing.

New Booklist:

Here you can select a student and a school year, then choose to print all his/her books, sorted by type or by subject. Or, you can print just one subject’s books or one type of book for a student. You will have the option to print only title & author, or those plus the publisher & description in a handsome report. The dialogue box there is easy and will guide you through. Booklists are something else that you might want to send along with a transcript to a prospective school.

Duplicate Chores:

Just press the "duplicate" button inside the Chores Box, where you will be asked if you want to copy only the chore identified by the arrow, or ALL the chores to another student. It will also offer to empty all previous chores of the student to whom you are duplicating, from a check-off box at the bottom.

Preferences:

It is a good idea to visit your new Preference Box under Set Up. Make sure that is has the selections you want for 10 different issues, such as what day of the week is first on your calendar.

Transcripts:

These are tucked away under Print Reports, Grades. First, you will need to create a grade report for the student, even if you don't grade, because that is how the program identifies the subjects, and tallies the hours, as well as obtains any grades. Then, go to the Transcript button and choose whether you want the Transcript to show only graded subjects or all subjects logged, and whether you want the # of logged hours to show up in the place of a grade for ungraded subjects. Please be patient with the program while it makes up Grade Reports, because this a gargantuan task -- sorting through every logged lesson for the year for your student!

In the Transcripts, the GPA is computed as it would be in a college setting -- based on credits as well as grade for a class.

Credits are determined by the number of hours logged for that subject. The Missouri State Board of Education explains in their Website: "To earn one unit of credit, a student must meet all the course requirements and earn a passing grade in a course which meets for at least 7,830 minutes a year. Half- and quarter-units may be earned for courses meeting proportionately fewer minutes." This curious number is the equivalent of 130.5 hours per credit. We believe that this is what College Admissions Personnel will be expecting from a Credit Unit, as well. Therefore, GPA's in your Transcripts may not match GPA's in your Grade Report, where every subject is counted as representing one credit regardless of the number of hours logged.

Since credits are granted in 1/4 unit increments, a subject will not show up in the Transcript if less than 32.625 hours are logged in that subject in that academic year. If you find that too many subjects fall out of the transcript because of this way of counting credits, you may wish to 'combine' subjects. That is, combine Typing, Spelling, Grammar and Composition under the subject of Language Arts, thus pooling the logged hours in each of those subject areas.

Grade Levels:

As noted above, you will need to return to Set Up, School Year, to identify your child's Grade Level, so that the Transcript will be able to identify the Grade a child was in during each year described there. At the bottom of this dialogue box choose a student on the left and a grade on the right. You may type in a number like 4-5 for a child who is doing subjects in both grades, or who will be in both grades during that fiscal school year.

Teachers List:

This might be a handy list to print and add to your transcript. It would allow prospective schools to identify and contact teachers outside the home for references. If any of your outside teachers are a part of a larger organization, you will want to return to Set Up, Teachers, and identify that organization in the new box you will find there. It has a quirk we haven't conquered yet -- you will have to check the Primary Home Educator box in Set Up / Teachers for all teachers who should show up in the home school section.

Archiving & Unarchiving:

This can be found in Work With Lessons. Just follow the simple & quick instructions for storing away or retrieving a previous year's data. It will still be saved each time you back up data.

Data Back-up:

You will find "Back Up Data Files" on the Main Switchboard. It will ask you if you want to back-up both your data file and your template file, and where you want to save it. This is your two-button "crash insurance policy". Computers do crash; I have scars to prove it. When folks ask me, "How often should I back-up my Data?" I ask them, "How much of this do you want to have to regenerate from memory?" Their pale countenances suggest that we should all get in the habit of Backing Up Data every time we complete a new week of lesson plans. Dr. Computer & I can send you a new program, but we can't help you pull your data out of the air. If at all possible, store your data in a different computer, if you are lucky enough to be networked to another one in your home. Your data will fit on a floppy disk only for a while. If "zipped", it will fit on a floppy for quite a while longer. After that, you are looking at using a re-write-able CD-ROM or ZIP-type device. Figure out what will work best for you, or call/e-mail Barry for advice.

The New %:

This will show up in your Monthly Summary of Hours, just above the % percent telling you how well you are accomplishing your hours for the year. It tells you how well you did for just that single month. There is nothing for you to do here.

Hot Tips not yet shared:

Set Up

We have put more defaults into the set up boxes, which you may want to delete, including a lot of "(none)"s. I like to use "(none)" for all my defaults, because it makes it easier to notice that I need to enter an actual subject, or whatever, there, if "(none)" is not appropriate. The intention was not to torture you current users, but to make it easier for brand new users to get their set up accomplished.

Entering Books

I have learned to add two weird book titles to my book list -- "*" for reading books that change so fast, and "_______________" for a spontaneous choose-your-own book or magazine, as in weekend or vacation reading. Because the program won't let me leave a true blank in the book space, the "*" is as close as I can get to a blank in my template. It catches my eye in the lesson plans to remind me to fill in the reading book of the day/week. When I go to log completed lessons, I don't replace the "______________" with a title, unless that title has never appeared for that student before (I want to make sure it makes it onto her reading list). If my Lesson Plans get subpoenaed into court, they can have copies of my scribbled on ones, which will show the title.
Also, I will put "_________________" for things to be spontaneously chosen, like classical music or spelling task activity cards. Again, for these I don't replace the blank when logging hours.
When I am entering biographies in Enter or Edit Books, I now list them by the famous person's name, then the beginning part of the title, e.g.: "Benjamin Franklin (The Many Lives of...)" or "George Washington (The Real Book About...)". This makes these books ALOT easier to find in the drop down boxes.

Entering Chores

I have found it useful to put dashes at the end of a chore until the bell stops them, to make the sheets easier to read across to the check off boxes, but then I admit to being a little reading disabled

Building Templates

If you've been afraid to use this feature, you need to call or E-mail Wendy! Templates can add years to your life.
When template building, don't forget that you can build a Monday, then copy it to Tuesday. Then, copy both of them to Wednesday & Thursday, etc. Then, customize each day to look the way it should. Finally, you can duplicate the whole kit-and-kaboodle to another student, and customize it to them. The name of the game is saving time. You're listening to a veteran of hundreds of set-up thanks to her being the chief guinea pig.

Lesson Planning

From within the template table or lessons table, if you need to delete an entire day or day(s), you can press "Shift" on your keyboard and then the "Delete" button in the Dialogue Box, and it will bring up a box that lets you choose the days you want deleted.

Duplicating & Moving

When duplicating (or moving) one or individually selected lessons, the lessons are by default duplicated back to the original student. To duplicate or move selected lessons to a different student, that/those student(s) must be selected in the destination box (on bottom right).

Printing Assignment Sheets & Chore Reports

Pressing "Control" "p" on your keyboard is the only way we know to pull up a Printing Dialogue Box that will allow you to print more than one copy of a lesson plan or other report (e.g. Chore Sheets & Assignment Sheets).

Logging Lessons

I have found for my fastest logging, I keep right-hand ring finger on enter, and right hand forefinger on the decimal point. Then, pick out my numbers with my left hand.
Remember the option "Alt" "l" for logging lesson and "Alt" "d" for deleting Lessons. You can also just hold down "alt", and then keep hitting "d" repeatedly to delete a lot of lessons at a time quickly. However, be sure to keep your eyes on the box (child? date? book title?) that will indicate it's time to quit deleting, because the speed can be intoxicating, and deletions are forever!
When LOGGING, I go back, at the end of logging a week or a month, to enter the last minute additions from the 2 blank spaces at the end of the lesson plan. It’s easier than trying to remember not to click past the last lesson, when you can still add a new lesson to that same date.
"Log Completed Lessons" now allows you to choose a date to go to or to change to, AND allows you to choose a student to go to or change to.
It is not safe to log completed lessons with a subject of "(none)", because those hours & grades will not be recorded or tallied or reported in most of the reports. Your numbers will not match-up. If you need to create a miscellaneous subject, please give it some other name, perhaps "misc.".

Credit Units or Credit Hours vs. Actual Time in Logging

As of Fall, 2000, FHE has revised its description of how to log time according to Missouri Law. Please check their website at www.fhe-mo.org, or contact your FHE Regional Director or HSLDA or your Lawyer for information. In FHE's book, "First Thing First -- 2000" they say,

...the bottom line is that the responsibility of recording accurately the hours of instruction lies with the parents. Remember that this documentation is designed to serve as your defense, so it is to your advantage to be cautious in the recording of your hours. Keep in mind that in the event of a legal challenge, a judge may ask you to explain how many minutes are in one recorded hour in your log. In a formal classroom setting, an hour of instruction is a typical classroom session, a unit of educational instruction or activity. An hour in the typical classroom does not constitute 60 minutes on the clock. In most classrooms, it is between 45 - 50 minutes. Instruction away from home for field trips, choir practices, private lessons, etc. certainly may be added to your diary and log.

This seems to suggest that even if you complete a full day's math lesson in 15 minutes, that it is not recommended that you log 1 hour for that lesson.

Monthly Log Reports

In Monthly Log Reports, MLR will list only the first four non-core subjects, if there are more than five, and lump the rest under "Other", due to space limitations. At the bottom right hand corner of the page, it will explain what the names of the other non-core courses are, though it will not separate out their hours. They will be identified and separated in other reports.