Zane Education - It's what the Tinkel's are using this year!

Okay. I'm going to admit two things about this interview. Number one...there is so much to Zane Education that there is no way that six weeks of regularly using it would be sufficient to cover it all. Number two...I hate that we reviewed this during the summer, because we are just so busy that we hardly had time to use Zane Education at all but we did use it some and loved it. I'm going to fill you in on what we used and what we thought, and then share what things that we are looking forward to using in the coming school year.

What we used and what we thought about Zane Education:

I am a visual learner. Some of my best memories from my school days were movie times. It was always exciting to see the old reel to reel movie projector set up in our classroom because we knew that something exciting was about to happen. I know that a lot of you homeschool moms and dads are a lot younger than I am so you may not believe this, but when I went to school there was no internet! Yes, you read correctly...no internet! In fact, we didn't even have any computers. So, any extra stuff that we had in the classroom was in the form of film strips or reel to reel movies. Now, I know that with the invention of the computer and the internet, the world has opened up so much more. Videos of any sort are at our fingertips. The only problem is, you have to search the internet for them and you never know what kind of garbage you might find in them. The searching and previewing is often not worth the time it takes.

That's what I like about Zane Education. You can trust what is on there, so you don't have to preview everything, and everything is easy to find. In school, I loved watching geography movies and learning about other countries. Joshua, our middle, aspergers syndrome child, also loves learning about other countries. He's always looking at geography books and asking me if I'll look up videos of other countries on the internet. Enter Zane Education! Zane education has some wonderful geography videos that Joshua loves. All of the videos that I have seen on their website have been very well done.

And, speaking of the website. Zane Education's website is also very well done. Everything is categorized. After you log in with a user name and password that you choose, you click on the video button at the top of the screen. Then when you get to the video page there will be a list of categories of the different videos. You can find almost any topic from Art to Social Studies and anything in between. They even have a music category! Or, if you want to browse all of the videos for a particular grade, you can do that as well. They have every age group from elementary to adult.

Once you choose a video you'll also notice a few other buttons in the left hand column. Which, brings me to my next section:

What we plan on doing with Zane Education in the coming year:

There is so much that I have not tapped into with this website. As I was saying, there are more buttons in the left hand column once you get to a video. These buttons are all added links that you can use for extra study of the topic that your video is about! There's links to dictionaries, thesaurus, an extensive encyclopedia and even a world fact book with even more of information.

But, that's not all that the Zane Education website has. If you want to make something into a complete study, they have lesson plans and quizzes that go along with the videos. You can access them from your entry page or on each videos page. I plan on using the lesson plans and quizzes for Joshua a lot this next year. Because of his autism, we haven't done a lot of quizzes and test with him in the past, but I think the online quizzes that Zane Education provides with all of it's videos except for the math videos will be perfect for him this year.

Speaking of the math videos. I plan on using those a lot with John Allen this year as well. Last year's algebra was terrible for him. We got to a place where he and I both got stuck. Zane Education has a lot of math videos that will be perfect for him to use. If there is something that he doesn't quite understand or needs a different perspective than what I can give to him, then the math videos will be wonderful for him to use.

There are just so many ways that I can think of for all three of my boys to use Zane Education's website. All of the videos are subtitled which makes it great for Joshua. He can read along with the voices. Jacob will also be able to follow along as he begins to learn to read this year. John Allen can use these videos for science and literature. I could go on and on but I don't have the time! So, how much does all of this cost? Well, if you were sharp, you may have already seen that a monthly subscription to Zane Education's website is just $8.99 a month! I have seen supplemental CD's that go along with different subjects that cost more than what Zane Education costs for a whole year! And, if you subscribed to Zane Education you would have access to more than just the science videos. There would be the math videos and the music videos and the health videos and the library skills videos and the religious studies videos and the...oh just click here or on one of the hi-lighted links above and check Zane Education out yourself. There are other membership plans that you can choose from, both monthly and annual plans, that allow you to access different things. There is even a free basic membership. Whatever you choose, you won't be disappointed. Happy Homeschooling!

As usual other members of the TOS Review Crew reviewed Zane Education and you can find what they had to say by clicking here.

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Review Crew I was given a free years subscription to Zane Education's website in order to try out and give my honest review on this blog.