Brightstorm Review

Brightstorm is a site offering study resources for high school students as well as test prep and college counseling services. As a part of your homeschooling curriculum, Brightstorm can be a great supplement to whatever course you have. They cover math, science, and English subjects at a high school level and boast a library of over 3,500 videos to help you fully understand each concept.

I used Brightstorm for about three months during my junior year. I am a professional slacker and roped in as much help studying for the SAT and ACT last minute. Brightstorm's videos are easy to follow and fun rather than dry and boring like so many similar site's content. Brightstorm also offers videos and problem solutions tailored specifically to certain textbooks. They support common texts from major textbook publishers.

However, in my personal opinion, Thinkwell's videos are generally more engaging and BenchPrep's and Thinkwell's courses more comprehensive. However, Brightstorm does offer college counseling that neither of the other sites offer. If you're homeschooled and looking for a little more guidance than what you can scavenge from Google, you may want to consider investing in this or a similar counseling system. It's not necessary to shell out anything for counseling, though. I made it to college by myself and so have many other homeschoolers.

If you're looking for a physical counselor, someone who can advise you during your college application process and help you create your transcript, look elsewhere. These are videos.

.You can buy as subscription to their materials on a  month-to -month basis or purchase a year subscription at a discount. I only needed access to the videos for a few months because I was mainly using the test prep section for a specific test or two. If yours is a similar case, go with the month-to-month plan. If you're looking at using Brightstorm as a supplement to your curriculum and you're not already a senior, the year plan is significantly cheaper.

Overall, Brightstorm's content is high quality and their pricing is competitive. Their college counseling section gives them an edge on competition, but it's only another library of videos. I personally prefer Thinkwell and BenchPrep's content. If you like the idea of the counseling section, that may make BrightStorm more worthwhile for you when compared to other, similar sites.

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.

Math Planet

http://www.mathplanet.com/

Math courses. No registration required.

Subjects:
Pre algebra
Algebra 1
Algebra 2
Geometry
SAT and ACT math

Features:
Videos
Problem sets
Explanations and examples

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

HS Tutorials

http://www.hstutorials.net/index.html

Subjects:

Math
 - Geometry
 - Pre algebra
 - Algebra

Computer Science
 - Into to CS
 - Operating systems
 - Anti spyware
 - Multimedia presentation
 - Information management
 - 2d imaging
 - 3d imaging
 - Word processing
 - Internet search
 - Google toolbar
 - Keyboarding
 - Computer and internet saftey
 - Spreadsheets

CAHSEE
 - CAHSEE math
 - CAHSEE english

Features:
- Narrated videos
- Activities and assignments
- Handouts, documents

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.