Thinkwell Online Courses Review

I've taken Thinkwell classes since I was in 8th grade. I love them! I've taken Public Speaking, AP Biology, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Precalculus, and right now I'm taking AP Calculus AB and AP Chemistry. Here's why I'd recommend them:

• The teachers. Every teacher in Thinkwell's videos is obviously passionate about the subject they teach and extremely qualified to teach it. They are good at what they do, too. Prof. Burger has taught me math concepts I never thought I'd understand. Bonus points for being extremely funny and charismatic. I don't know how he works so many jokes into math videos, but I've actually laughed out loud on numerous occasions while watching them. Even the teachers who don't crack so many jokes are enjoyable to listen to because you can tell that they love what they do.
• The self-paced system. You can finish your class as fast as you want or take up to an entire year, if you need it.
• Great pricing. You get a lot of quality for a very reasonable price.
• Layout of video lectures: you can see the teacher, what he's writing, definitions of new terms, and a lecture outline all at the same time and the screen doesn't feel overly cluttered. Pretty rare and impressive.
• There is a ton of content in each course. Each lesson has a video and an exercise. Each unit has a practice test, an exam, and a homework. Each unit also usually has links and interactive content related to the videos as well as definitions for the vocabulary learned in that unit.

BenchPrep AP, ACT, and SAT Prep: Review

After trying Kaplan, I stumbled across BenchPrep, a lovely site where you can choose to have access to a single course for a year or pay a monthly fee to study as many as you want. I've been using BenchPrep for two months now and I like it a whole lot. Pictured above is a snippet of what the site looks like - a simple, streamlined layout, cross compatibility with computers, smartphones, and tablets and lots of courses to choose from.

Pros:

• Clear, well-written answer explanations
• Easy navigation
• Ability to complete the course from beginning to end or hop from section to section
• Compatible with phones, tablets, and computers
• You can access everything they have for a pretty low monthly price - perfect for some extra studying those last few months before a test
• After taking practice tests there's a clear breakdown of which skills you need to work on
• Ability to rate sections by how hard or easy they are for you, which is great when you need to concentrate on and quickly find parts of the course - fantastic for homeschoolers with busy schedules!

Cons:

• Some of the courses don't have as many practice questions or tests as others - there are two ACT math prep courses and I prefer one to the other by FAR. If you're buying the monthly all-access version of BenchPrep that's obviously not an issue.
• That's really it!

I'd recommend using BenchPrep if you're looking for courses that highlight strengths and weaknesses so real progress can be made. It's easy to see where you're at and there's no battling through section upon section of review before happening upon something you need to work on. In true homeschooling style, there are no limits on how long you take or how quickly you complete the work and you can study only what you need to practice without an effect on the entire course progress and grade.

OpenCulture - courses

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

OpenCulture - Textbooks

http://www.openculture.com/free_textbooks

General Chemistry Online

http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/index.shtml

Pretty much all you need to learn chemistry in one place.

Learning Science.org

http://learningscience.org/

Basic physical science, life science, environmental science, health, geology, biology, and chemistry for grades K-12.

ChemTopics

http://www.chemtopics.com/labs.h

Good resource for chemistry labs for AP and Honors students.

videolectures.net

http://videolectures.net/Top/

Another free video site!

Topics:
Agriculture (4) Architecture (90) Arts (70) Astronomy (45) Biology (391) Biotechnical sciences (2) Business (914) Chemistry (176) Computers (301) Computer Science (5095) Criminology (11) Earth sciences (28) Economics (119) Education (165) Environment (152) Events (460) Forestry (1) Health Sciences (25) History (204) Humanities (255) Journalism (43) Law (77) Life Sciences (43) Mathematics (443) Medicine (152) Military (15) Neuroscience (15) Philosophy (80) Physics (385) Psychology (54) Recreation (3) Regional (17) Science (476) Society (459) Sociology (44) Sports (7) Technology (574)

12846 items.

 

Supports 5+ other languages including Slovenian, Croatian, German, Dutch, and French.

Learners TV.com

http://www.learnerstv.com/

Features:
Downloadable video lectures (17,000+)
Animations (400+)
Live tests
Lecture notes
Power points (350+)

Subjects:
Biology
Physics
Chemistry
Math
Computer Science
History
Medical
Nursing
Engineering
Accounting
Management
Psychology
Literature
Language
Law
Economics
Education
Philosophy
Communication
Astronomy
Political Science

SparkNotes

http://www.sparknotes.com/sparknotes/

Articles and study help about everything. Best known for their literature notes, but their other stuff is pretty great. Can get distracted by the non-academic related articles but you should be fine if you stay in the academic pat of the site.

Features:
College resources:
- College reviews
- College video tours
- General college articles
Articles:
- 25+ subjects, in depth coverage
- Famous SparkNotes Lit. guides
- Famous "No Fear" Lit. series including Shakespere and other classics

OCW - Yale

http://oyc.yale.edu/

Free Yale course materials. Video material on youtube and itunes U.

Courses: About 35
Subjects: 20
          Astronomy

Biomedical Engineering

Chemistry

Classics

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Economics

English

Environmental Studies

History

History of Art

Italian Language and Literature

Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

Music

Philosophy

Physics

Political Science

Psychology

Religious Studies

Sociology

Spanish and Portuguese

Hippocampus

www.hippocampus.org

A few full high school courses with textbooks/videos/problems/tests/answers. Expanding to a beta site soon.

Algebra (English, Spanish)

American Government Biology (AP) Calculus (English, Spanish) Chemistry Earth Science Economics Physics Religion Psychology Statistics US History

Khan Academy: a severely underrated homeschooling tool

Khan Academy is arguably the world's most popular learning website. Originally hosting math videos, Khan Academy has now expanded to include videos on biology, chemistry, physics, health and medicine, cosmology and astronomy, art history, civics, government, finance, computer science, economics, history, test prep, and music.

The site makes it beautifully simple to begin the process of learning a new math topic or refresh yourself on various subjects you haven't touched for years. The built-in learning environment tracks your progress and you have the ability to add students and view their progress. You're able to track how much of each topic (geometry, trig, algebra) you (or your students) have mastered separately as well as view how much of the entire subject (math) they've successfully got under their belts.

Most of the videos are between 5 and 15 minutes, making them easily digestible. In addition, there are practice questions to help solidify learning. The site is gamified: points are earned for watching videos and for completing practice questions. You can earn badges and view charts of your points earned over time. If you take a look at the site's gamification, you'' easily be able to see how using Khan in your homeschool could possibly spark a little friendly competition among your students.

I have used Khan Academy since it's early days. In high school, (I was homeschooled) I watched Khan Academy videos when I was still foggy on a topic that my curriculum covered, but maybe didn't explain as clearly as Sal Khan, the founder and the teacher in many of the videos, tends to. In college, I used Khan Academy to cram for math exams. The cramming itself is not admirable, but Khan helped make it effective.

One of my personal favorite bits about the videos is that Mr. Khan loves to explain WHY something works the way it does (an unlikely-looking math equivalency, for example) instead of just insisting that we do it that way because "that's how it's done", something I've heard from too many teachers who can't be bothered to explain the concept further. Also, Khan explains everything as clearly as humanly possible without being dull, which is wonderfully uncommon in and of itself. Here's a video from Khan Academy about the birth of stars to illustrate my point:

Khan Academy is potentially a priceless homeschooling tool. The quality and quantity of resources here are difficult to match, even with a paid curriculum. I would recommend it as a supplement to any of the subjects available on the site. I'd argue that it cannot be standalone curriculum because sometimes the practice questions lack breadth. But it is undoubtedly a wonderful homeschooling resource: it is almost a free tutor who knows everything about almost) everything.