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.
Interactive timeline of history: "Over 2000 files covering 3000 years of history"
Features: Maps, biographies, catagorization of events by science, politics, religion, war, culture, and time periods, free online textbook and other resources.
Features:
- Articles on sperate events
- Biographies
- Timeline - Can view by period, 100 year span, or even modern, up to date, day by day events.
- Commentaries
- Book and movie summeries
- Maps
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.
