Oct. 29, 2009 - Vantage Learning Review
Vantage Learning produces MY Access! Home Edition, College Edition, Professional Edition and Add-On Packs. I was given a subscription to their Home Edition in order to review and will focus only on this edition.
The Home Edition is an online, subscription based tool to help your child "enhance their writing skills and become more confident thinkers." The student's writing skills are graded based on: focus, organization, content & development, language use, and mechanics & conventions. There are many topics to choose from per age group or you can create your own topics depending on what you are studying. The age groups are 8-10, 11-14, or 15-18.
I chose to have weekly reports delivered to my email but you could choose to have them delivered monthly. You can also enter up to seven email addresses. You can manage the writing assignments for each child so that only the age group you want your child to work through has assignments. For positive reinforcement, you can set goals and awards for each student and give them an incentive for so many points earned. For instance, I awarded free ice cream for 250 points if done by a certain date. Once the student reaches their goal, they know what their award is.
The Student Portfolio shows progress reports for each of your students. At any time, you can access your order history and see how many days you have left before your account expires so there's no trying to remember when you paid for your subscription and how many days you have left.
I had four out of six of my children participate in this review as they were in the correct age range and wanted to participate. Natalie is 16, Nathanael is 13, Wesley is 11 and Marcee is 9. All of them submitted reports and they all scored "below proficient". I am not surprised by this with my younger ones because I don't focus on writing, but I am concerned with Natalie's score. However, I am sure this program will help her as well as her siblings write better paragraphs and they will eventually become proficient in their writing.
All of my children are different. Marcee likes earning points. She does not like it when it tells her she's below proficient. However, Marcee chose to just write random letters and submit it for grading so she would get points. This is something you will need to be aware of since it could happen to you. Wesley likes to type rather than write by hand so he enjoyed using the program. He likes some of the topics but not all of them. Unlike Marcee, he likes that the program tells him that he is below proficient so he can challenge himself to work harder to do better. Natalie hasn't had time to work on her reports so she doesn't have anything to add to this review. As for Nathanael, well, he has already gone to bed so I can't get his opinion.
I do recommend this product as long as you are willing to either supervise your children's writings or review their submitted essays in a timely manner or else you could end up with essays like some of my kids have submitted that contain phrases like this: "I liked my lunch though it was Incredibly stale bread with jelly suprise, I'm trying to get points for my account so Peace be with you my Sister in Christ." or "BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TAAADAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Yes, those are actual excerpts from my kids' writings. Lovely, huh?!
The yearly subscription costs $99.95 for up to 3 students or $129.95 for 6. Click here to go to the Demo Center. Click here to order. Click here to see what my crewmates think.
* I received a subscription in exchange for my honest review.
