EdTechLens {TOS Review}

When we were chosen to review the Rainforest Journey by EdTechLens my 8 year old son was thrilled to say the least.  We were given a one year online subscription for grade 3.  My son is an animal lover.  If you ask him what he wants to do when he grows up, he will tell you he wants to be a zookeeper. He tells us that he just wants to take care of animals, especially ones that can't take care of themselves.

Rainforest Journey is great addition to your school curriculum.  It is geared towards children in kindergarten through 5th grade.  It was suggested that we do it three days a week, but my son was enjoying it and did it everyday.  Some days he would just go back and review what he had already learned.  He enjoyed watching the video clips.  The monkey one was his favourite.

Rainforest Journey is a fun, interactive, online program that thoroughly teaches about the rainforest.  It discusses the different layers of the rainforest, why water is important, the plants and fungi, as well as the many different animals that live in the forest.  Each lesson has short audio narration for non readers.  This was a bonus as I didn't have to be there for each lesson to read words that he couldn't.  Some lessons also had short videos to watch.  The website was very easy for my son to use.  We saved the website in my favourites, and he could easily click on that and access the site right away.  Wherever he stopped the lesson he could continue at the same spot the next time he logged on.  It was really wonderful.  We did the course on my laptop, but I'm thinking we should have used our iPad.  No particular reason other than my son uses our iPad for other school things, and I prefer the kids not to use my laptop.  :)

There were 4 units, with 34 lessons altogether.  The are suited for each grade level, with increasing complexity.  In the photo on the right you can see a bar.  At the time when I took the photo, my son was about halfway done with the course (green bar), so the pink is what he had left.  I really like that parental section where I could see his progress and his test scores.  Speaking of the tests or assessments, you could do these online or you could print them out and keep them for your records.  They are a few different ways they give tests which I found interesting.  This really helped me see how my son learns, and which type of tests he does his best with.  There was multiple choice, matching, and open-ended questions.  They called these Factual Assessment, Depth of Knowledge, and Open Ended Assessment. 

If you're not interested in your students doing the test, or even doing the course out of order, you can unlock it and skip around.  I did not do this, as it was easier just to start at the beginning and work our way through.

My one little complaint - I do wish you could simply switch users rather than log out, but it saved both of our user names and passwords, so it didn't take long to change users.

Each lesson also has a PDF that allows you to print the actual lesson.  My son ended up cutting out the photos of the animals and pasting them into a book along with the notes about each animal.  There are also activities that can be done with just your child or there is a school option, this would be great for a co-op.  Each unit has a vocabulary section, which was really great for words my son didn't understand.  We could review them and learn their definition. 

This course took my son about 3 weeks to do.  This was with me slowing him down, and him going back and watching some of the video clips again.  This would be a supplemental course, and would be great if you're learning about different environments, or animals, or Africa, etc.  Rainforest Journeys could fit into your homeschool curriculum very easily.

All in all we are happy with Rainforest Journey by EdTechLens.  I'm excited to see what other programs they will have in the future.

And just for fun, here is there page with free videos.  These were fun to watch.

One great thing about homeschooling -

eating ice cream AND doing school work!

The 5 units for Rainforest Journey:

- The Big Picture

- Adapt or Die

- Animals

- Plants and Fungi

- Ecosystem

If you'd like to see some sample lessons, click here.

This gives you a good idea of the program.

For pricing click here.  They currently have a special for 50% off, click here for the code.
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To read more reviews on the Rainforest Journey - click below.