BJU Press Distance Online Learning Review

[Music] hi everyone and welcome back to my channel this is Erica from confessions of a homeschooler and I just wanted to thank you so much for joining me today I have had a lot of questions on our new history program that we are using and we are currently using a distance online learning program from reading press I will link all the information for where you can get this product below and then I will also have a link to my blog post below which will have more information and all that but this is kind of what it looks like in the textbook format and this is our ninth grade history for this year its cultural geography they have the distance online learning program for all kinds of different grades and all kinds of different subjects one thing I really like about it is that you can purchase one subject for example my daughter is only doing history this year but you can also purchase them kind of as a group or you can purchase them individually just based on your own needs and so that makes it really kind of a nice alternative for us for high school this year I think this is a great program I think it's nice for her and for me I really like that she gets to do video instruction and she also still has textbooks in her hand and then it makes it a lot easier for me because I'm not having to do the lesson with her we have four kids for most of you who have been watching me you already know that and so I do have a lot of other teaching that goes on and so this just takes a little bit of weight off my shoulders and it gives her a little bit of Independence in her studies as well and so I think for high school I'm really really enjoying this program I really like the choice that we've made so far so I'm how it kind of works when we signed up for the program you can order these books in hardcopy like we did you can also just get them digitally so I think it's a little bit of a less lesser fee than ordering you know the actual textbooks and then what you would do is you go into your account and I'll kind of show you what it looks like on the computer in just a minute here but you just go into your account you find the chapter that you need and you can either print it off or your student could read it online you know just on the computer whatever works best for you personally I like having the in our hands I think that it's a little bit easier for her to read and to study she can take these to her room you know she can kind of highlight in this book and all of that and so I think it just makes a little bit easier so how we did it is that we purchased the digital online learning course along with the student textbook and the student activity book the student activity book are basically worksheets and she gets these assignments as she goes through the videos and then she just does the worksheets out of her book and then she turns us into me and then I look online the answer key is online and you could download them or you could just open them up online I just open them up online so it's easy and I'll kind of show you what that looks like as well but then I can just grade these really quick and then you can keep your grades in your own grading system at home if you're using like an online software or they also have an online gradebook and so you can just type in the grades in there as you go and it just makes it all really easy so what her average date kind of looks like is she will log into her computer and she has an account you created as the teacher when you order the curriculum and so she just logs in if she had more than one class it would appear on her screen she only got the one so she clicks on that one class and it brings her up to whatever lessons she needs to be doing that day and so she can just click on that lesson and then there's a link to the video of there's information on whatever pages you know she might be reading out for textbooks there's also information if she has to do a student activity page and all that kind of information is all right there on her screen so it's easy for her to see what she has to do and as she goes through and does the math she can mark them complete and then she kind of knows she's done with the date so I think it takes about 30 to 45 minutes per day it kind of depends on what she has going on some days are less and some days are more but she basically starts out with watching her video so she just clicks on the link for her video that day she watches the video and she takes notes while she's watching and then so a lot of times they'll start going through the activities in here on the video as well and so she'll kind of do that with the teacher as they go through and then if she has any extra reading she'll you know when once the video is over she shuts that off she does her extra reading she makes notes from her reading as well and then I have her make flashcards to study from and if you missed my flashcard how to study for a test video you might want to check that out that's why she does that it's not really required in this curriculum so she makes those flashcards and then when she's done with that she's pretty much done for the day and she just lets me know she's done she turns in any you know thing like this that she has to do or if she did a quiz I'll show you what that kinda looks like so I know what she's doing each day as well and then I can just go in and grade them really easily but I want to say it's about 30 to 45 minutes kind of depending on you know what she has going on for the day one thing I do want to say that I really like about the distance online learning from BJ you press is that the videos are unique in that there is a teacher talking to your student kind of like I'm talking to you right now so looking right at the camera they're talking you know essentially to your student up close and personal it's kind of like a one-on-one type of thing some of the other online learning programs that I've seen it's like your student is watching another classroom do the activities and they show the kids in the class and they're raising their hands and participating all that and while I think that that's probably okay I do prefer the one-on-one kind of aspect of the bju videos a little bit better because I think it makes your student feel more like they're watching you know like a YouTube video or something where they're learning something versus watching another class and they aren't really able to participate in that class very well it's almost like they're watching from an outsider standpoint but that's totally my personal opinion you know you might feel differently in a different program might work better for you so you know take that for what it's worth but I do like that it's more of a one-on-one interaction with the video so let's take a just a minute and I will take you over and show you what my daughter's day kind of looks like what the online portion of it looks like for her so what she sees when she logs in and then we'll look at what the online portion looks like for me so what I see when I log in and how I grade her work and all of that all right so here's kind of what you get in the mail if you order the textbooks now this is also available online and you can just print your own off but this is the student textbook and it's actually a pretty good sized textbook it is full of colored pictures and then this is a student activity book and then the tests and quizzes are actually online so this is kind of what the textbook looks like your student reads and then they've got you know all kinds of different topics in here this particular one is cultural geography so this is the ninth grade bju I'm distance online learning history course and so that's what we're doing this year but it's a nice colorful book so I do kind of like having the printed one also when you're studying from things I think it's easier to have the printed version but like I said you can actually do the online version if you don't want to order the books as well and then it also comes with the student activities pages and these are given out as assignments as they go through and I'll kind of show you what their assignments look like as well but they just go through and do an activity and so what one of her days looks like is she basically does her online video she watches a video lesson and then she always takes notes while she's watching her video and they have kind of slides in there as well as she's going through the video so that she kind of knows what to write down and things like that and so I also have just a you can do a spiral notebook or whatever she picked out this one it's more of a book but this is what she uses to take her notes with each day and so as she's watching her videos she just takes notes on whatever they're learning that day and then she uses those to study from from tests and quizzes and all like I mentioned the tests and quizzes are actually online and I'll show you what that looks like for her and what it looks like for me okay so all she does each morning is go to bju press online and then she logs in and then over here it would list her courses she's only doing one so there's only one course here and it tells her what lesson and what day she's on and then it has kind of her running grade in there as well and if you click on the lesson it'll bring you up to just some information about it and if you need you know there's just some extra whatever information on the course and whatnot and then over here you can click on lessons and then it will bring you up to the lesson index and then you can see she's gone through this many and she's still working on this one and so all she does is she clicks in up here on the lesson itself and then it tells her what she needs to do it tells her let me scoot up for you so you can read a little bit better so as you can see right here it tells her what day she's on it tells her what student text to read and what she's gonna be doing and then down here it'll tell her what video she's watching and all she does is come down here and then she can click on this link right here and that will start her video for her and then she's got day 16 assignments and it tells her she needs to complete like a quiz or whatever and so right here it'll just tell her study 4 and take quiz chapter 1 over these pages read these student text pages or whatever and when she's ready to take her quiz she can just click right here on go to test center and that'll bring her to her quiz there's a password here I have to log into that so she can start her quizzes so that's kind of nice she can't just go in without you know and do a quiz without me knowing what she's doing so I kind of like that of it and it just kind of keeps going so here's her next day here's her activities and she can mark these complete as she goes through them so it's just really easy for her to kind of keep track of what she has to do and all of that and then it will tell her in here if she's got a test coming up or something it'll tell her study for chapter test whatever and she can look on her she has a little agenda thing that tells her you know what is happening on what date so she can mark ahead on her calendar that she's got a certain quiz or test or whatever okay one other thing I want to quickly show you is before they take like larger tests like chapter tests and whatnot they actually get to do practice tests and this is one of my favorite things about this curriculum is that they give them chances to do the test and how that works is she just goes to her test center and she can start her chapter two test practice test and it make sure that you know that you're doing the practice and then I log her in and she takes basically a practice version of the test and then if she gets any questions wrong we go over that together and then she can continue I think she has correct me if I'm wrong Vijay you but I think she has five attempts to do practice tests before she has to take the actual test and it's not like she's taking the same test over and over again once she is comfortable with the practice test that she's taken she can go and do the real one but the questions are worded slightly different so each time she does one of these practice tests they changed the questions around so they might ask different questions they might change the wording of the questions it's good and bad in that if she reads a question and then she notes oh I got that one wrong and she you know makes the flashcard to study off it or whatever next time she gets to it they might actually have reworded the questions so she needs to pay careful attention to the questions and make sure that they didn't change the wording because that has happened to us where she noted that she got a question wrong she did a flashcard for it she studied that flashcard when she went back to take the test they had changed the question on her and she actually got the question wrong again and so you just have to be careful I actually kind of like it because it flip-flops words around and so it makes her pay more attention to what she's doing but when she's done with her practice says then she can come down here and take the actual test and I have found that it gives her a lot more confidence in her tests because she kind of knows what to expect it's giving her a chance to practice but it's not giving her the actual answers like I said they're switching up the questions and then I found that she's doing a lot better on her overall test because she has been able to kind of study for them using the practice tests so that's basically what her her screens look like and now I'm going to show you what it looks like for my end of the thing all right as a teacher when I log in my screen looks slightly different it's similar but different so I basically select my student which I've already done and then if I had other courses or whatever I would have them here she's only doing the one it tells me what day she's on and then I have a calendar down here that I can add things to I'm not using this I'm using my own but you could use theirs and so when you click on hers again it gives you the overall information and then you can click on lessons over here on this side right there and then again it'll tell me where she's at and when I click on the lesson just like on her screen it kind of brings up what she's done and that kind of thing the only difference and let me get back up here to one we've completed is you'll see these green boxes and so as the parent this are things that I need to look at and need to grade so for example she had an activity out of the student activity book I showed you and there's a link right here so all I have to do is click this link and then it will you can either save the file or I just open it up in it's just a PDF and it will automatically open up the worksheet that she should have done and it has in read all of the answers and that makes it really easy for me to grade her worksheets she just turns in her student activity book and that kind of thing if there is a test on here it'd be very similar here also in the green is what she read if I want so if I don't have it's the teacher's edition of her student reading basically so I can click on that again it'll open it up in a PDF and it'll show me what she read for the day and there we go it just shows me what she read for the day and it's kind of the teacher's version so it's got some lesson information in it as well but it's basically her reading this is what her book looks like and then this over here would be some of the information from the lesson that she has gone through so it's basically like the teacher's manual I don't use this a whole lot because she does the video lessons and the teacher and the video lessons goes through all of this information but there's extra ideas and things like that in there if she were to take a test it would also pop up on this screen right here and I'll kind of show you what that looks like there's also a like a table of contents so to speak over here and if you needed to get to something else quickly you could just click on it but that's basically what it looks like it looks exactly like hers except that it has these green little facilitator boxes with links in there for me if I need to grade something or look anything up so it's actually really easy for me to go in here see what she did on day 14 she did this reading she did these activities and then here's something I need to grade if there's nothing I need to grade then I don't have a green box and so it makes it pretty easy and then if there's tests again there'll be a link there so that I can go grade her tests and I'll kind of show you what that looks like as well all right so when she is done taking a test she can't actually see all the questions will go back through on my screen and I can tell what she has gotten corrected incorrect so right here is a little green check if she got it correct if she got something incorrect there'll be a red box and let's see if she here we go so she missed this one right here so it's easy for me to scroll down see what question she mixed missed it says the student answer and then the correct answer and what her choices were and if it's something like an essay or something like that then it expects the parent to go in and grade that and so in here it will tell me what she should have written if I disagree with the grade that the system gave her I can just change it right here and for essays they will always be at a zero until you go through and grade it okay so but this is basically what it looks like you can go through and see what they answered and what they didn't and what we do is we go through this screen together and she makes flashcards to study off of if you haven't seen my how to study video you might want to check that out but she goes through and makes flashcards off of her reading and her notes to study from and then if she got something wrong on the test she'll come back and make a flashcard for that one okay so here is an essay question that she got and when you do this online the first time she took a test I was like oh my gosh you got a horrible grade what happened and it's because they automatically put the essay grades to zero until I as the teacher go in and grade her essay because a computer can't really do that so here's her student answer and then down here it tells you what they had expected out of your student and so it's really easy for me to go and see like okay did she mention all these things that they wanted her to mention if so I can go in and give her the grade that I feel like is appropriate up here in the corner and so that makes it really easy and then once you do that it just saves the grade in there and I had she had two essay questions that we had to do that for this time and then when she's done that will then give her her final grade and you can go back to the gradebook and it'll show her final grade in there but it makes the grading and the testing situation really easy so all of the tests and online quizzes are online or all of the tests and quizzes are online so the only thing that she has you know kind of in her hands are the student workbooks that I showed you and the student activity pages and like I said you can get those online you don't have to order the hard copies I just thought that it would be easier for her to work off of hard copies and then I'm not printing off pages and all of that kind of thing but that's basically what it looks like it's really quite easy to UM grade it you know if you have any questions there are links in here there's a course schedule link down here if you need the course schedule but honestly I haven't used that that much because everything is just kind of right here online and I can just click on it now if she did do something and I need to see I can click on parent resources over here and then it's got all of these sa answer questions facilitator materials you know rubrics Student Activity answer keys test answer kids record of grades teachers Edition video lesson guide all of this stuff is in the parent resources if you need it but I find that I don't really go to this section that often because it's all in my lessons tab right here as I just go and find it you know what lesson she's on and then I just pay attention to this stuff in the green box and I can click on all of this stuff from that green box so it makes it really easy in my opinion to grade her work and just make sure that she's doing what she needs to be doing and all of those kinds of things so that's kind of what it looks like on the computer end of things alright guys so that is my review of the bju Press distance online learning for cultural geography for ninth grade I actually really am enjoying this I wasn't sure how I was gonna feel about for doing an online program and you know this is actually the first one that we've ever done for the most part for all of our homeschooling other than like typing which is an online thing and math you see they watched one video but I'm still really facilitating that during the year I wasn't sure how I was gonna feel about her just doing this for you know completely online program I will say that I loved it and I unless something drastic changes I definitely plan on using this with my other kiddos because I really like the video aspect I like that she's getting more of a in-depth lesson than what I might be able to give her at this stage in you know ninth grade and it's also giving her some independence she's really responsible for going in and you know watching her videos and doing her assignments and turning things in and you know writing you know studying for tests and writing things on her calendar so she can kind of you know organize her home-school so I really like that it's providing her with that more independent study and I also like that it's kind of taking some of the pressure off of me so that I'm freed up a little bit for other subjects for the other kiddos and that kind of thing so I'm really enjoying this and quite honestly I almost wish we would have started this a little bit earlier I think ninth grade high school is a great time to do online distance kind of learning and so I don't I don't I don't regret not starting it earlier but I am really enjoying the fact that she is doing this this year it really has taken a huge weight off of me and I think she's getting a lot of good content through the video lessons the lady seems really nice she's very pleasant to watch she's a thorough she talks slow enough that the students can write they can also pause the video and whatnot and then there's slideshows that pop up in between so they almost know you know what to take notes on and that kind of thing so anyways we are really enjoying it if anything changes I'll make sure to let you guys know but as of this moment I really do plan on continuing with this for her for next year so I really am enjoying this process so if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those below I was doing my best to get back with you thank you so much for watching this video and I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Erica Arndt

Views: 21,888

Keywords: Homeschool, History, Curriuclum, Online, Learning, Review, Teacher

Id: uFdyQ-vMQww

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017