Thursday, October 9, 2014

Fortuigence - A Writing Course #REVIEW

Fortuigence Review
For the past few weeks my oldest son has been working on our latest review from Fortuigence.  This is an online writing course where you work with a real life teacher through online videos and email.  

There are four courses you can take with Fortuigence:



Essay Rock Star Personal Statement Writing Course - $57.00

Essay Rock Star Persuasive Essay Writing Course - $57.00

Essay Rock Star Textual Analysis Writing Course - $57.00

Essay Rock Star Expository Essay Writing Course  - $57.00
or 
Essay Rock Star which includes all four above for $197.00

For our review we choose to do Essay Rock Star Personal Statement Writing Course - which is designed to help students with a common essay often required for college entrance.

There are 8 lessons for this course.

All of the courses are  designed for ages 12-18.

Fortuigence Review

How we used this course:

My oldest son who is in 9th grade was the one working on this writing course.  He would watch the videos then complete the assignments.   He did most of the watching and writing on his personal tablet (which is more like a mini-laptop.)  Then he would actually email me the work so we could go over it together.  After that we would submit his work to our teacher Ms. Lily. From then  we would wait for a response from her.  Her responses varied - either good job move on or tips on how to re-do the assignment and resubmit. 

Some of the work - watching the videos- is spent online but the bulk of it is writing and re-writing is offline.  We set up a notebook for Austin to put his printables (which were occasionally available for a lesson)  - I thought he would like to hand-write his work but he wanted to type everything which was much more convenient.  We printed out copies for his notebook of each draft.

My Thoughts:

We are still working through this course.  I really thought it would be quicker but there is some wait time between submitting lessons and getting your response back from the teacher.  We had to go back and edit a few times too.  So while I think you could complete this course in 4 weeks I think with a busy schedule like ours 8 weeks is more realistic.  I would like to note that Ms. Lily was very quick to respond (typically within 24 hours) - but that didn't always leave us time the next day to actually move forward.  For example, if my student worked all day Monday on his writing assignment and then submitted it by 3pm and then we heard back by 2pm the next day - our school day was basically  done.  So he would work again on Wednesday.  I hope that is clear - on how working on the course worked out for us. 

I also thought that I wouldn't have to do much work with my student but that wasn't our case.  He still wanted my opinion on everything! I'm thinking that is 'our' unique problem and most students would use this completely independently.

We both like that we received real feedback from Ms. Lily.  This is really the best part of this course.  It was so helpful that it wasn't just 'moms' opinion.  When Austin asked to revise his essay - Ms. Lily said the same things I did!  However they were received much better from her. The break down of the lessons is also pretty awesome.  You brainstorm and free draft.  He even created a thesis statement.  All of this is preparing him for college and college entrance exams.  I find that so beneficial because it has been almost 20 years since I had to do those myself.  

We will continue working through the course for the next few weeks and finish before Halloween!  I also wanted to add that this course is fairly short so it is easy to fit in along with your other work during the year.  I also think it would make an awesome summer course!  The timing of 4ish weeks would be perfect for summer learning schedules.

 
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1 comment:

  1. Hi Lisa,

    Thanks so much for your review! I'm glad Austin is learning a lot from the course, and he's free to complete it at his own pace. Every student at every age is different, so the 4-6 week time frame is definitely a general one. It does change if we need to stop for a while and spend some extra time on a particular lesson with a student, but that's the beauty of a skills mastery course.

    Have a great day,

    Lily :)

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