Hear how Michigan Bookshark Virtual works for any family in Michigan and how it might be exactly what you're looking for in your homeschool journey—the perfect blend of print curriculum with online support and accountability. With this program, students are mostly learning via reading, discussing, hands-on experiments, and math manipulatives. Only about 25% of the time are students working on the computer. So this isn't a typical computer-based, highly screen-dependent program. It's a book-based program with a virtual component for assessment, grading, and recordkeeping. 

Jen Myers: "...being an educator, one of the things that I looked at was the standards. I went through each grade level, each subject to really comb through that to see, 'Is this meeting grade level?' And when I saw that it covered the standards and benchmarks for Michigan, I thought, 'Well, this could be a great fit for our families who do want the option to learn online.' And so then as we started to use it with our families, I just kept hearing more and more positive feedback on how much they loved the materials, loved the curriculum, loved the supplemental activities, loved having online teachers work with their kids. Here they had been homeschooling and everything was on their shoulders as far as preparing the curriculum, doing the grading. And now, these parents were able to step to a facilitator role where the curriculum is set for them and there's other teachers grading, especially like with the language arts. They loved having someone else grade the papers that their students were writing."

Our guests are Jen Myers, Partnership Program Director at Alpena Schools, and Gwyn Domke, the BookShark Coordinator. Find out about your eligibility to receive FREE curriculum through Michigan BookShark Virtual: 

LISTENER COUPON CODE

02:10 Gwen's introduction

03:05 Using a standards-based curriculum like BookShark.

04:07 What online teachers an provide via MI BookShark Virtual.

04:47 An overview of MI BookShark Virtual.

06:30 How much of MI BookShark Virtual is screen-based.

07:59 The advantage of leveled (vs. graded) curriculum.

09:50 Why parents find BookShark do doable and flexible.

13:20 Easy to travel!

14:32 Teaching multiple children together with a single program.

15:54 The math options available. 

17:35 How MI BookShark Virtual provides accountability. 

21:47 The process of getting started.