Glossary
Click on any term below to see the related Help Page.
- Activity
- a short description of the type of work to be done in the assignment e.g. Lesson, Test, Reading, Worksheet, etc. When using weighted grading, weight is
assigned to each Activity within the Course.
- Agenda - Calendar View
- provides view of your student's Appointments, Assignments, Attendance, Chores and Day Off entries in a calendar format. You can view the Agenda for one student at a time for one day, a week, or a month.
- Agenda - List View
- provides a list view of your student's appointments, assignments, attendance, chores and days off in one place. The list view provides an easy way to select multiple items to edit, reschedule
or delete. The List view can be grouped and sorted to suit your preferences. You can view items for any one or more students at the same time for the date range of your choosing.
- Archive
- allows you to retain all the records associated with an item and yet remove the item itself from all of its related lists. For example, if you are no longer going to need the Algebra course you have
created, you may archive that course. This means that you will no longer be able to select `Algebra' from any of the Course lists, but all the assignments, lesson plan items, library items, etc. that
are tied to that Course will be kept in the database. If you find that you need the Course again in the future, you can reactivate it.
- Assignment
- the central point of record-keeping in HSTOnline. All of your hours, grading and skills reports will be generated from the information you enter in Assignments. Assignments can be created
individually or in groups using the Copy or Lesson Plan features. You can copy multiple assignments to other
students.
- Assignment Location
- allows you to track the location where teaching/learning took place. This is especially helpful for homeschoolers in Missouri and other areas where one is required to document the number of hours
of schooling that actually take place inside the home. You can create a Home/Away report that shows the tracking information.
- Attendance
- a way to track the number of days your student actually spends doing school work. You can enter full or partial days of attendance. You can track the number of hours spent in school each day as well.
- Auto-Attendance
- an option to have HSTOnline automatically enter attendance records based on completed assignments for the date.
- Course
- a subset of a Subject that defines a more specific area of study. A student may be working in one or more courses per Subject in a given year depending on the area. For a Subject of Science
you may choose to have Courses for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. You will use the Course area to award credit hours for your high school student which will appear on the
Transcript
- Course Code
- any 1-7 characters of your choosing which serve as an abbreviation of the full Course name. This field is only required if you choose to create two or more Courses with the same name under the
same Subject.
- Custom
- an additional 150 character text field in which you can enter any additional information you like for your Lesson Plan item or Assignment.
- Day
- a field in the Lesson Plan item that creates the order of your items in the Lesson Plan. A 'Day' represents a day of school for that subject. Lesson Plan items with the same Day value will be placed on
the same date when using the Scheduler function to create Assignments. Day numbers are not tied to specific dates or days of the week. They simply provide a way to order and organize your lesson plan
items. Day and date details are set as part of the Scheduler process of creating Assignments from your Lesson Plan items. If you have a Subject/Course that
you only assign on certain days of the week (for example, Science is only taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays), you can use the Presets feature to assist
in assigning just to those days of the week, or you can use the Weekly feature in the Day Options area to choose specific days of the week on which to
assign items.
- Day Off
- a day you choose to mark as a 'holiday', 'vacation' or 'other' day. A Day Off can apply to one, more than one, or all of your students. When creating Appointments, Assignments, Attendance, Chore or
Days Off entries in the Student's Agenda, you can choose to have HSTOnline skip over Days Off that have been entered into the calendar.
- Directions
- instructions you want the student to have access to when completing an Assignment.
- Export
- a menu option on the Agenda - List View, Lesson Plan, and Library
lists that will create a CSV file of the items currently in view.
- Grading Overview
- a page linked from the Student Dashboard that shows grades for the selected Student for their Active School Year. The Grading Overview displays the yearly grades and the breakdown for each semester.
You can click on any Subject/Course listing in a Term on the Grading Overview to see the Assignments tied to that Subject/Course and a summary showing how the grade was calculated.
- Lesson Plan
- a planning feature which allows you to set up all the work you intend to assign to one or more students throughout the year. You can create as many different Lesson Plans as you like. You can put
items from multiple disciplines into the same Lesson Plan or create a separate plan for each. Lesson Plans can be used over and over again. You can import Lesson Plans created by other Tracker users.
You can export your own Lesson Plans to share with other Tracker users.
- Lesson Plan Name
- the name you give to your group of lesson plan items. It might be the name of the subject or course, the name of purchased curriculum, the name of a primary resource, your student's name and grade
level, etc.
- Library
- the central repository for all of your books. Quick entries can be made using the ISBN/ASIN lookup feature.
- Links
- a field to add URLs of websites that are to be used or consulted when working on an Assignment.
- Non-School Day
- a day of the week on which you do not generally hold school - such as Saturday and Sunday. You can designate any day(s) of the week as a non-school day. This allows you to have HSTOnline
automatically skip over those days of the week when creating Appointments, Assignments, Attendance, Chore or Days Off entries in the Student's Agenda.
- Notes
- the Notes field in the Assignment form is a space where you can list information for your own benefit. Notes entries are hidden when signed in under a Student Account.
- Order
- a field which allows you to force a specific sequence in which Assignments will appear on a given date when the Start/End times or Blocks are the same as other Assignments on that date.
- Page/Lesson/Chapter (PLC)
- a field of up to 150 characters to contain the actual Page, Lesson, Chapter or other identifying information for the Student on where the work is to be found in the textbook. The
copy functions of HSTOnline allow you to create multiple Assignments where the PLC field is automatically incremented (Lesson 1, Lesson 2,
Lesson 3, etc.) based on parameters you set.
- Reschedule
- a process of moving Appointments, incomplete Assignments, and/or incomplete Chores forward or backward in time.
- Resource
- any book, workbook, textbook or other item that the student requires access to in order to complete an assignment
- School Day
- a day of the week on which you normally hold school. You will set your School Day preferences in the School Profile and/or
School Year windows. Your selections are mirrored in both locations.
- School Year
- any range of dates you specify that make up a year of schooling. School Years must have at least one Term and can have up to four Terms.
- Sessions
- allows you to track of how many times your student works in his various areas of study. For most users, one assignment equals one session.
- Skills
- learning achievements or other mileposts that you set for your student which can be designated by grade level, school year, discipline, etc. Skills can be attached to specific assignments
in order to track your student's progress in that area.
- Skills Progress
- Skills your Student is working which can be labeled as 'In Progress' or 'Complete'. You can use the Notes field to comment on their progress.
- Smart-Entry Field
- a feature that allows you to add a new item to the list for Activities, Assignment Locations, Chores, Lesson Plan Names, Resources, Skills, or Subjects/Courses having to leave the add/edit window you
are working on.
- Student
- the child doing the work. The number of Student records allowed is determined by your Subscription level. When a student graduates from homeschooling
you can archive their Student record to retain all of their assignments, grades and work history and yet remove them from the Active lists.
- Subject
- a general description of the area of study such as Math, History, Science, Language Arts, etc. Subjects can be designated as Core or Elective.
- Supplies
- a field in which to list specific supplies needed for the completion of an Assignment.
- Term
- a term is any number of days within your school year. You must create at least one Term per Year that spans the starting and ending date of the year. You may choose to create quarters,
semesters, etc. up to 4 Terms per year. Each Term must be allocated to one of two Semesters per year for the Transcript.
- Time Spent
- allows you to keep track of the actual time your child spends on individual assignments.
- Topic
- an optional field of up to 150 characters where you can enter a short description of the material covered in the lesson. The Scope & Sequence reports can
provide a printout of Topics by Subject/Course.
- Used
- Lesson Plan items are used to create Assignments for your students. Once a Lesson Plan item has been utilized in this way, HSTOnline automatically marks it as 'Used' by placing a check in the
Used box and assigning a Used Date. The purpose of this status update is to help you keep track of where you left off in the Lesson Plan. You can choose a Lesson Plan item to use no matter its status.
The 'Used' status of Lesson Plan items is stored in the database on a per Student basis so you always know which Student has been assigned work from which Lesson Plan items.