Applying for review opportunity

I wrote recently about the opportunity to apply for the Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2014. The application form is now up! I've been a member of the Crew for a year now and it has allowed us to try new curricular materials including on-line programmes, books for me and the children, a physical maths programme, lapbooks, unit studies, historical fiction, a cook book and more. Other Crew members have reviewed different items. Reading their reviews has been helpful and we are now using a writing curriculum which I learnt about from other Crew members' reviews.

The Schoolhouse Review Crew will be taking applications for the 2014 Review year from October 24 - November 8!

Are you a homeschool blogger?
Do you enjoy writing reviews?

Then you might be perfect for the Crew! 

Some requirements for being a part of the Crew include the following: 

• First of all you must be a homeschool mum or dad. You don’t have to home educate all of your children, but you must home educate at least one. 

• You must be willing to use the review products for about six weeks in your home, before writing your review. Review periods have deadlines and requirements for the reviews. You must be willing to follow these requirements. No, that doesn’t mean you must write a positive review. But it does mean that there are certain elements that are required. And the deadlines are firm. If you are often late for deadlines, the Crew is probably not for you. 

• You must have a blog on which to publish your reviews. Your blog needs to be active with a following. By active blog, I mean that you should be blogging regularly, at least weekly, about your family and homeschool (in addition to your reviews). Your blog should have followers — RSS feed or email subscribers, as well as in social media. The Crew does not accept brand new bloggers who just set up their blogs for the purposes of applying to the team. 

• Are you using social media to promote your blog? Activity on at least one social media platform is a requirement to serve on the Crew. Which one is up to you — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google Plus are the options. You will need to be willing to promote your reviews there and post a widget or plug-in publicly on your blog, indicating how many followers you have in social media. 

• You must be willing to check into the Crew's Review Management forum. This is where information is disseminated to the team. The leadership does everything possible to make things easy for us, outside of writing the actual review, but you need to be willing to participate by checking in almost daily. 

• Sample reviews are helpful. If you’ve never written a review on your blog, go ahead and write one for curriculum you are currently using in your homeschool. This will help the leaders see how you approach writing reviews. 

Why should you want to be a part? 
The Crew has over 250 review bloggers and has been running for over five years.
It takes the job of reviewing seriously but the leadership team are supportive and provide guidance on writing reviews in a professional way as well as clear deadlines and reminders about this. There is a mentoring programme for new members provided by established members of the Crew,a social media networking group, many blog and social media tutorials, and lots of incredible opportunities for our team, including blog carnivals, the opportunity to guest post on the Crew blog, and the blessing of some incredible friendships.


How can you apply? 
After making sure you meet all of the requirements, if you believe you would to an asset to the Schoolhouse Review Crew and wish to join us, please click over to the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to apply.

Come be a part of The Old Schoolhouse family!

The Crew isn't just for bloggers in the US. It would be good if other UK home education bloggers applied!