Finding the Best Homeschool Software

I’ve loved technology since technology SO wasn’t cool, and it has been a big part of our homeschool journey from the very beginning. Nine years ago, when I began homeschooling my oldest son, I was lucky to find a few good interactive storybooks and a few primitive math software titles. The homeschool software landscape today, though, looks vastly different. With software publishers scrambling to feed the hungry educational technology market, and online applications zooming ahead due to more streamlined distribution avenues, there is almost no subject that you can’t find wonderful software applications for. The problem is, how do you know which ones are worth plunking down your hard earned dollars on? I’m going to try to introduce you to some great tools and resources for making those decisions a little less unnerving.

CD-ROM Software – There are some terrific software titles being released every month for the educational market, and homeschoolers can find some great deals, from time to time if they know where to look. A great resource for keeping up with new software releases is SuperKids. Not only do they review the recent software offerings, but they also offer a great list of product support contact information for various software developers. Learning Village is a good stop along the way for software reviews, and take a minute to check out their article on how to choose the best educational software, while you are there. Another helpful resource is the Educational Software Directory, which is the only search engine on the net devoted exclusively to educational software. A kind of back-door entryway that I use to find out about new software releases, is using a Google alert system. By signing up with Google Alerts, I have them email me anything that comes up in the way of news or press releases for the search term “Educational Software”, and this way I am the first homeschool mom on the block to be “in the know” about what’s the next new thing in software releases.

CD-ROM Curriculum – Another great thing about today’s technology is that homeschool publishers are becoming aware of how much we use our computers in our everyday schooling tasks. So many companies are making their homeschool products available via CD-ROM, which is not only more convenient and more environmentally friendly than all those consumable workbooks and textbooks, but also allows the style of presentation to be more interactive and engaging. Many of the most recognizable names in homeschool publishing have CD-ROM versions of their curriculum, including Switched-On-Schoolhouse, Teaching Textbooks, Rosetta Stone, and Alpha Omega. Even if you don’t have access to the internet, or have a slow dial-up connection, you can still homeschool with software using CD-ROM style curriculums.

Online Software Curriculum – The internet has come an incredibly long way in a few short years. Broadband speeds have gotten faster, browsers have become more intuitive, and online homeschool curriculum has exploded in popularity. And it is no wonder! Take the Time4learning homeschool program, for instance. This is an online homeschool program that provides web-based multimedia lessons, interactive activities, printable worksheets, online assessments, answer keys, teacher guides and progress reports, all for less than $20 per child. When parents can get access to so much product for so little money, is it any wonder that they are turning in droves to online homeschool distributors? Kids raised in the internet generation expect a lot from their educational curriculum, and in many cases, online curriculum delivers.

Online Educational Freeware – Even if you don’t get your whole curriculum online, net-savvy homeschoolers can supplement almost any curriculum with the incredible choice of free educational sites on the web. The only problem is that these can be difficult to wade through to find the best quality offerings. Nettrekker is the most amazing tool I’ve found for helping me find the best sites and suggestions for learning. Although it is a subscription based product, it more than pays for itself by leading you to grade-specific and subject-specific sites with descriptions, reviews, and content overviews. There are also many websites and blogs dedicated to helping educators locate quality educational materials online. Homeschool.com usually puts out a yearly list of their 100 top-rated educational websites, and Surfnetkids.com offers an email newsletter with updates about the best new educational sites. No matter what you are currently studying in your homeschool program, there is probably an online educational website to go along with it!

Even if you consider yourself “technically challenged”, you have probably already used some form of homeschool software in your homeschooling program. By using some of the helps mentioned above, I hope you will be able to minimize the time you spend searching for good homeschool software, and instead maximize the time you spend utilizing it to make your child’s education as fun, educational, and individualized as possible.