Scholaric Support For Notes

Today I released notes support in Scholaric.

Many of you have asked for this feature or something like it.

Notes are like lessons in many ways - they have a description, can be added, deleted, edited, shared, unshared, and can repeat.  They can also be bumped.

The key difference between notes and lessons, is that notes do not affect the goals, report cards or grade books.  They only appear in the planning grid and in printouts.
Today I released notes support in Scholaric.

Many of you have asked for this feature or something like it.

Notes are like lessons in many ways - they have a description, can be added, deleted, edited, shared, unshared, and can repeat.  They can also be bumped.

The key difference between notes and lessons, is that notes do not affect the goals, report cards or grade books.  They only appear in the planning grid and in printouts.

Notes are marked as such by selecting the Note? checkbox in the planning dialog. 

The note will show up in italic text on the planning grid.


Lastly, you can dedicate a whole course to notes using the course menu.  This is useful if you want to tie a note to a specific day, and NOT have it move from bumping.

I hope this helps you.

Happy Planning

Slowness of Scholaric

I've spoken with my hosting provider, Heroku.

My shared database plan allows for intermittently poor performance.

The service seems to be improved now, and I'll keep an eye on it.

At this time, I'm not ready to move to a dedicated database plan, which offers consistently faster performance,  but if I continue to see excessive latencies, I will move quickly to do that.

1000 Tests

I've just written the 1000th test for Scholaric.  These tests run automatically, in the background, while I am developing Scholaric.

They perform 2719 individual checks to see that everything is working properly.

Great stuff, helps me sleep at night.

Happy Planning

Announcing Scholaric Fantasy Baseball League

I'm starting a Fantasy Baseball League for homeschool students this year.  If you have a baseball lover in your homeschool, consider joining my league.

Why Play Fantasy Baseball?  What Does this Have To Do With Homeschool?

First of all, baseball is a wonderful sport, full of history.  To love baseball is to love American history.  Just watch some of Ken Burns' Baseball miniseries.  It can be a great teaching idea.  Playing fantasy baseball also makes you more aware of the game's great current players, beyond your local team.

Second, baseball's focus on statistics is wonderful for a math lover.  There are many sorts of averages that are calculated, which describe a player's performance.  My children, who have played along side me for several seasons, ask what a certain statistic means, and we must describe it in mathematical terms.  This is applied mathematics in the real world.

Third, fantasy baseball is, mathematically speaking, a wonderful optimization problem, full of constraints, such as a limited roster, a maximum number of starts, limited bench.  Substituting one player for another could make me better at one statistic, but would make me worse at another.  Every move must be evaluated this way.  The draft is even more full of decisions - best player or best at a position? Pitching or hitting?  Power or average?

If you are interested, we will be playing through a private league ESPN fantasy.  Your student must be 13 to enter.  However, if you have a fan under 13, then YOU can enter and play with your child, but please make this a learning experience over a competition.

The draft will be at a time convenient for me, but hopefully early enough that sleep is not lost for Eastern Time Zoners.  If you are unable to participate in the live draft, ESPN will autopick for you.  (My draft is usually so bad, I'd be better off autopicking!)

Space is extremely limited, so fill out this form today and I'll notify you once the league is set up. 

Mark a Whole Day as Complete

Released today, you can mark an entire day's lessons complete for a student.

On the day menu in the planning grid, you will see a new option on each day that has incomplete lessons: mark all complete.


Select it and it will perform the same logic as if you selected each lesson that day and marked them as complete.

Again, at your request, Scholaric is improved...

Happy Planning

Quick Complete for Lessons

Released today, a change in lesson quick complete.

As mentioned here, you can quickly mark a lesson as complete by holding the alt key while clicking the lesson.

Today, I have updated Scholaric so that the time field is no longer required for quick complete.  

This was originally in place to protect users from completing a lesson which was not yet (in my mind) able to be completed.  However, our user base has expanded such, many Scholaric users do not track time.

This came at the request of a user.  You asked, Scholaric delivered.

Happy Planning