Since we suddenly have a LOT more visitors, I thought I'd now go ahead and ask:
Are there any courses you'd like to see on HC USA that aren't already covered? I based the current list on 1) A comparison to what Florida public school students take to graduate and 2) What my own children want(ed) to study. Beyond that, I'm only guessing on what others would like to see.
Also, would there be any interest in some sort of forum for users where parents/students can discuss the courses? I am not opposed to such a thing and can certainly add it to the site, but I would be VERY strict about users and types of posts. (No spamming, no even-marginally-questionable language, no flaming, etc.)
If you have any thoughts about either of these topics, you can make a comment here on the blog or use the email contact information.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Electives & Test Prep Only Pages.
The electives courses and test-prep only pages have been checked for broken links and updated. All other pages have been checked, as well.
Mathematics.
The courses of the mathematics section have been checked for all links and updated where needed.
We've gone "viral."
In the past few days, traffic to Homeschool College USA has exploded, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25x as many hits per day. As such, I believe it might be time to get a little more personal, based on some emails I have received.
This site is run by three people: myself, and my two teens. In trying to trace back where all this traffic has been generated, I came across a nice post on a forum that called HC USA possibly "too good to be true." I want to stress absolutely that this website is NOT designed to make money, bait-and-switch you with offers of freebies then push you into purchasing something, or anything like. I fully understand the challenges of homeschooling on a very limited budget, and after doing so myself for years, I simply wanted to pass on all the information I've spent hours upon hours gathering, as well as the system we used to create our own studies.
Links and websites come and go on a very frustrating basis. We are doing our best to keep up with this, but please be patient if you find some dead links. There are literally hundreds for us to check on a regular basis and when they do not work, we have to edit our web pages to reflect the changes. It's very time consuming, as I'm sure you can imagine. We do this ourselves. We pay a nominal fee for hosting the site, so that you aren't hit with a lot of ads, but there's no wonderful tech team maintaining it for us. When we need to change a link, we have to edit the code ourselves. These past few months, I haven't had as much time to devote to this site as I have wanted, because my eldest child was finishing up and graduating from high school and this naturally required quite a lot of time/attention.
If you find a dead link, you would be doing us an enormous favor if you would use the broken link contact information on the contact page and let us know.
Also, if you find a broken link, don't assume the information is gone completely. Often, the website has simply moved their content around. For instance, Free World U seems to constantly redirect things, so while a link from HC USA's Geometry page to Free World U's geometry flashcards may no longer work, you can go to Free World U's main page and find their geometry section. Of course, we will still be working to make sure our links are updated, but in the meantime, this may allow you to use a resource, even if our link is no longer correct.
I will probably, for now, remove the classical site from the main page. My children and I have so much work to do, just updating the links from the main site, we simply can't devote time to continuing the classical page. This does not mean I will remove the page itself from the site, so anyone using it can still find it, but it will remain on hold until we can get back to it.
Finally, as I've mentioned, this site is free. We don't make any money from it (and in fact, lose a small amount of money because of the web hosting costs), and if I ever do mention a book to purchase, please note that it will not be through an affiliate link - I will not be attempting to make money from your purchase - and the recommendation will ALWAYS be optional. My goal is to continue to provide a variety of free resources for all high school grades.
I'm going to close with a plea: If you've ever wanted to get involved with something on a volunteer basis and you like this site, please consider pitching in to help. With my son graduating, his availabilty is going to lessen, so even if we had one more person on our "team" this would be a real boon. You don't need to know coding and you don't ever have to field emails or contact anyone. All I'm looking for is someone(s) who would be willing to, on a monthly basis or so, check the links and let me know of any that aren't working. I am aware that there are software programs that do this; unfortunately, these programs can't catch if a link is still working but no longer pointing to the content as described. A live person is needed to manually check and confirm the links. If we can get two or three people, this would be even better, as the site could be divided among us all and lighten the load.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this! If you do have questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
This site is run by three people: myself, and my two teens. In trying to trace back where all this traffic has been generated, I came across a nice post on a forum that called HC USA possibly "too good to be true." I want to stress absolutely that this website is NOT designed to make money, bait-and-switch you with offers of freebies then push you into purchasing something, or anything like. I fully understand the challenges of homeschooling on a very limited budget, and after doing so myself for years, I simply wanted to pass on all the information I've spent hours upon hours gathering, as well as the system we used to create our own studies.
Links and websites come and go on a very frustrating basis. We are doing our best to keep up with this, but please be patient if you find some dead links. There are literally hundreds for us to check on a regular basis and when they do not work, we have to edit our web pages to reflect the changes. It's very time consuming, as I'm sure you can imagine. We do this ourselves. We pay a nominal fee for hosting the site, so that you aren't hit with a lot of ads, but there's no wonderful tech team maintaining it for us. When we need to change a link, we have to edit the code ourselves. These past few months, I haven't had as much time to devote to this site as I have wanted, because my eldest child was finishing up and graduating from high school and this naturally required quite a lot of time/attention.
If you find a dead link, you would be doing us an enormous favor if you would use the broken link contact information on the contact page and let us know.
Also, if you find a broken link, don't assume the information is gone completely. Often, the website has simply moved their content around. For instance, Free World U seems to constantly redirect things, so while a link from HC USA's Geometry page to Free World U's geometry flashcards may no longer work, you can go to Free World U's main page and find their geometry section. Of course, we will still be working to make sure our links are updated, but in the meantime, this may allow you to use a resource, even if our link is no longer correct.
I will probably, for now, remove the classical site from the main page. My children and I have so much work to do, just updating the links from the main site, we simply can't devote time to continuing the classical page. This does not mean I will remove the page itself from the site, so anyone using it can still find it, but it will remain on hold until we can get back to it.
Finally, as I've mentioned, this site is free. We don't make any money from it (and in fact, lose a small amount of money because of the web hosting costs), and if I ever do mention a book to purchase, please note that it will not be through an affiliate link - I will not be attempting to make money from your purchase - and the recommendation will ALWAYS be optional. My goal is to continue to provide a variety of free resources for all high school grades.
I'm going to close with a plea: If you've ever wanted to get involved with something on a volunteer basis and you like this site, please consider pitching in to help. With my son graduating, his availabilty is going to lessen, so even if we had one more person on our "team" this would be a real boon. You don't need to know coding and you don't ever have to field emails or contact anyone. All I'm looking for is someone(s) who would be willing to, on a monthly basis or so, check the links and let me know of any that aren't working. I am aware that there are software programs that do this; unfortunately, these programs can't catch if a link is still working but no longer pointing to the content as described. A live person is needed to manually check and confirm the links. If we can get two or three people, this would be even better, as the site could be divided among us all and lighten the load.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this! If you do have questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
INSPIRE website.
Unfortunately, the websites that have been providing free practice tests are slowly being taken down or blocked to most users. You may want to check to see if your local library allows access to free tests. Meanwhile, we will search for alternatives.
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