Switched-On Schoohouse Series: Parental Setup

Welcome back to my Switched-On Schoolhouse Series.  This week I want to share with you the ins and outs of setting up the program on your computer from a parent point of view.

As I had originally said in my first post, Switched-On Schoolhouse can be installed in one of two ways on your computer.  You can install just parts of it, and then run it off of the discs, or you if you have enough room on your hard drive, you can install the entire course right on your computer. 

Optimally you will want to install it completely on your hard drive if you can.  It’s a lot more seamless when using it, and on laptop a lot quieter too!  There’s no waiting for the computer to find the lesson on the disc.  You also have the option to install the program entirely on one computer and then network other computers in your home to it.  That’s a neat feature if you have more than one student using the software, and computers or laptops in multiple rooms.

Once you have the program installed setup is fairly simple. 

The parent/teacher sets up three sections.  School, Student and Curriculum.

• School Setup – This consists of choosing the way you would like the Assignments, Quiz/Tests, Grades, Terms and the Homepage to function. For example you can allow the student to have Internet access when working on assignment, set the number of problem attempts the student can have, spelling penalities (we have this set up at 2% on our curriculum, since Amber is very sloppy with her spelling), and what kind of resources the student has available on their homepage, for lessons and/or projects.

• Student Setup – This is where you enter in the students information.  Their name, username and password.  When a specific student is selected, you select the current term (school year), activate or deactivate the student, and enable advanced lesson planning which allows you to assign due dates to assignments, projects, tests, etc.

• Curriculum Setup – This is where once your subjects are installed on your computer you can assign a subject to your students.  This really comes into play when you have multiple students working on different subjects.

I found the setup very intuitive and had no problem setting up our calendar, and marking which days for the next year we would school, and assigning days to the subjects. 

I think this is one of the best parts of Switched-On Schoolhouse, being able to set your calendar.  Since we school on an odd schedule, because of my husband working weekends, it’s great that we can set any days we want for schooling, also because we school year round and don’t take the summer off.  Additionally since American Literature is only a half credit course but we’re going to use it the whole year, I was able to assign work for that subject only on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays. 

Once you have your calendar set up and the days you want subjects assigned, the computer does all the work and every assignment for the school year is plotted out on your lesson plan! 

If something comes up and you need to change a school day somewhere in your schedule, it’s easy to go in and change it too, and everything will update for you.  It’s a pretty nice tool .

If you’re interested in learning more on Switched-On Schoolhouse or would like a discount on a purchase of curriculum, click through on the button in my right hand sidebar, and you’ll be taken to the publishers site.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION:  I wrote this post as part of a review series on behalf of Alpha Omega Publishers.  I received 3 free curriculum subjects to use to facilitate my posts.

var idcomments_post_id = ’22’
var idcomments_post_url = ‘http://www.threedifferentdirections.com/blog/switched-on-schoolhouse-series-parental-setup.html’;