By Amy Neilsen

It is the first week of school. I have a new learning format and website to navigate, a new app to load onto my phone, and I have to figure out where to buy headphones that don’t dig into my scalp. I also need a better journal and a real notebook.

Granted the first week of any new school is bound to be filled with a lot of organizing, rah rah welcome to school speeches, and generic, big picture philosophy stuff. But, I absolutely love my school. I am so happy with my choice. It feel like listening to my own words sometimes. I love the guest keynote speaker they choose for our welcome session. Her message rang true to me and proved a point I wanted to make to myself about the program. Our lead instructor is going to take some getting used to, but I think it will be better once I am used to his speech patterns.

The style the material is presented in is mostly engaging and not too repetitious. They also use a good mix of teaching methods to make sure every type of learner is able to grasp the lesson. Each module is clearly labeled on the student website and the times for videos are accurate so I can determine exactly how long I will have to spend on each section excluding the exercises. This makes plugging the chunks of time into my schedule much easier.

So far the only thing I don’t like is the peer to peer interface between students. We’ll see if it gets better over time. I suspect they will have a more interactive forum later in the program. There is an unofficial Facebook group, but, there is no place to have a personal discussion among classmates unless they are friends on Facebook. And right now, I don’t know any of these people well enough to add them as a friend. I am sure there are students who do not have Facebook accounts and there has to be a way to have a discussion with them in the school learning website. I just need to roam the virtual halls a bit more to find it.

I am unhappy though that the modules for lectures open so late on Monday mornings, though. This school is attended by many international students. By opening the modules so late they have taken away almost a full days’ worth of study time for our European classmates, an inconvenience some students were already discussing. I hope the school addresses this issue too, since the late Monday start takes away one of my prime study times too.

But, so far so good. It’s Thursday. I have finished my module, earned 100 percent on the quiz and posted my discussion answers. I am banging out this blog post and then on to making ice cream sandwiches for the Edge of Summer Homeschool Faire for my children. And, I have an empty day on the calendar this weekend!