Review of Alpha Omega's Switched on School House

by Charlene Frank
(Jackson, WI)

We were so thankful to have learned about Switched On School House (SOS). This past year, 2009-2010, was our first year homeschooling. We had the challenge of jumping into homeschooling, five children with a toddler hanging around as well.

My children were grades 10th, 7th, 5th, 2nd, K4. We put our oldest three on SOS. SOS was a life saver for me!

Pros

• One of the "PROS" of SOS is it's automatic grading of everything except essay questions. The student receives immediate feedback on their assignments.
  
  
• Have you ever had a child who for some reason picked up some wrong concept on a math page and therefore followed through the whole entire worksheet with that wrong concept? The poor child receives the page back with the majority of the page wrong.
  
  With SOS, the child immediately knows on a regular assignment if the problem is wrong and can at that point hit show answer to see what he did wrong. We LOVED THAT! So much more efficient.
  
  
• Also, another "PRO" is it does all your lesson planning for the year. If you want an impromptu "field trip", no problem just recalculate the schedule the next morning.
  

Cons

• One of the "Cons" are of course being on the computer most of the school day. Some families do not care for that. For us, however, we feel it is important children learn how to use computers.
  
  
• Also, of course, boys are much more tempted to "play around" with the gadgets on the computer, etc. However, we became very familiar with Windows Parental controls and pretty much blocked the "undesirables".

I trust this review will be a help to your decision on what curriculum is the best for your family.

God Bless!