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I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

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Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#21

Post by JoshTriplett »

BadHumans wrote: post #3

Kids are getting scheduling via apps now? The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it. I've finally reached that "back in my day" age. It's a neat project though. I wasn't aware Soldered existed so this is a nice find.

> The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it.

While in general I'm a fan of "learn how to do things by hand for didactic value" (e.g. learning how to do long division before using the calculator to do it), I don't think a paper planner provides any didactic value to learn before replacing it with an electronic calendaring tool.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#22

Post by yapyap »

BadHumans wrote: post #3

Kids are getting scheduling via apps now? The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it. I've finally reached that "back in my day" age. It's a neat project though. I wasn't aware Soldered existed so this is a nice find.

> Kids are getting scheduling via apps now?

yeah, they’ve been for a while

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#23

Post by resonious »

Izkata wrote: post #13
jeroenhd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hardly new. My high school did this over fifteen years ago. This app just shows hour+subject+teacher+room number. Quite useful on days the hours/rooms get switched around because a teacher is on leave. Your paper planner won't inform you that your first hour is in another building tomorrow or that the teacher is ill (and yes, the schedules would change less than 12 hours in advance). It's hardly comparable. A…

> Quite useful on days the hours/rooms get switched around because a teacher is on leave. > Your paper planner won't inform you that your first hour is in another building tomorrow or that the teacher is ill (and yes, the schedules would change less than 12 hours in advance). That seems like a really odd way of handling it, and more confusing than it needs to be. For me the class was assigned to a specific room, not…

I guess it's a way of handling it that's enabled by the fact that the calendars are electronic. It could be that this way is easier for the school staff, but honestly I have no idea and can't even begin to guess, really.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#24

Post by Larrikin »

BadHumans wrote: post #3

Kids are getting scheduling via apps now? The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it. I've finally reached that "back in my day" age. It's a neat project though. I wasn't aware Soldered existed so this is a nice find.

I received a paper planner every school year from elementary school until I went to college. In elementary school the teacher would stand over us while we wrote in it.

I constantly would forget it at school. It would get lost at home. If the teacher wasn't reminding us about long running projects from weeks ago it would just be forgotten since I wasn't looking that far back.

Then I got to college and someone showed me that they put their assignments in their Google calendar and told me I could set up alerts in my email and later my phone. There were never any forgotten assignments ever again. Paper planners are provably worthless to me.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#25

Post by II2II »

whimsicalism wrote: post #20
BadHumans wrote: post #3

Kids are getting scheduling via apps now? The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it. I've finally reached that "back in my day" age. It's a neat project though. I wasn't aware Soldered existed so this is a nice find.

i don't think there is much value in teaching a paper planner

With many schools banning mobile phones, and similar communications devices, there aren't many alternatives to paper. Also, my elementary school uses paper planners. Given that most elementary schools forbid students from carrying electronics (for no other reason than loss and damage), there isn't much of a choice except paper planners.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#26

Post by aziaziazi »

SoftTalker wrote: post #19
jeroenhd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hardly new. My high school did this over fifteen years ago. This app just shows hour+subject+teacher+room number. Quite useful on days the hours/rooms get switched around because a teacher is on leave. Your paper planner won't inform you that your first hour is in another building tomorrow or that the teacher is ill (and yes, the schedules would change less than 12 hours in advance). It's hardly comparable. A…

I can’t recall even one time my high school schedule changed except between semesters, not any time a class met in another room. Not once. If a teacher was out sick, there was a sub but the room didn’t change.

Same for me. Genuinely doesn’t understand what’s the benefits for anyone. Maybe trying to get back "lost" hours when a teacher is sick? I think kids are better served with a stable, secure schedule than one that try to absolutely fit all the modalities decided for that school year.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#27

Post by dragonsky67 »

mfld wrote: post #4
BadHumans wrote: post #3

Kids are getting scheduling via apps now? The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it. I've finally reached that "back in my day" age. It's a neat project though. I wasn't aware Soldered existed so this is a nice find.

They still have a paper planner. :) But checking the app each morning is mandatory. And in my son's case, there are changes every couple of days.

It's no wonder that kids are so stressed/anxious these days, seems not even their school classes are certain.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#28

Post by kleiba »

This is cool, but on a second thought it's sad that someone had to jump through so many hoops -- not just to get his idea implemented because of lacking APIs etc., but that the school provides such a crappy service in the first place.

But then you realize that we're talking about Germany here, and before you downvote, trust me, anyone who has lived there for a while and especially if they had to deal with public administration will attest that it's a country that's literally 10 to 20 years behind in everything digital. You wouldn't expect it given Germany's engineering reputation, but improving citizen's lives through IT has never been their forte.

When we lived there for some years, the school my kids went to had four(!) different parallel channels of communication in the class that one of my kids attended at the time. That is, you could potentially receive a message, say, from the teacher through one of four different means, and so you were expected to monitor these channels every day. Some of them were apps, some of them were paper. It was a mess. Simply doing nothing digitally and only using paper slips would have been an improvement already.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#29

Post by ghaff »

NoPicklez wrote: post #14
jeroenhd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hardly new. My high school did this over fifteen years ago. This app just shows hour+subject+teacher+room number. Quite useful on days the hours/rooms get switched around because a teacher is on leave. Your paper planner won't inform you that your first hour is in another building tomorrow or that the teacher is ill (and yes, the schedules would change less than 12 hours in advance). It's hardly comparable. A…

Having had a paper planner in high school I don't recall there really being many issues with rooms needing to be swapped or teachers being ill having an impact. If the teacher is ill, the other teacher just takes their room. Having a digital schedule almost gives the school the ability to be more relaxed with the schedule, as opposed to it being built around a schedule that can hardly move. There is an important part…

It does sound like a dynamic digital schedule is just an invitation for a school to be sloppy. It's been a long time but I just don't recall situations where schedules changed a lot.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#30

Post by sourcepluck »

BadHumans wrote: post #3

Kids are getting scheduling via apps now? The best thing my school ever did for me was give me a paper planner and teach me how to use it. I've finally reached that "back in my day" age. It's a neat project though. I wasn't aware Soldered existed so this is a nice find.

Scheduling, and homework assignments, and textbooks [0], and handing in homework, and communicating absences, and asking the teacher a question later in the day in a groupchat, and the teacher sending an extra thing for everyone to read outside of class even just out of general interest, and communicating with peers about something in another class groupchat where the teacher isn't present, and...

Some kids have zero interaction with pen and paper for at least some homeworks, where they'll receive the assignment in a class group, do it on the tablet, send it back there as a PDF, and get back an annotated PDF with the corrections.

Not all schools are doing all of that. Some schools are though, and most seem to have implemented some subset.

While doing this, the kids are not necessarily taught the basics of what's going on on their devices. They tend to not know the difference between, say: a browser and a search engine; a window and a tab; a menu and a tool bar; an operating system and a desktop environment [1].

Source: students of mine, telling me about their schools and how things work.

[0] if there is a textbook. It could just be PDFs of lessons, which could be all from one source or various sources.

[1] until I keep pestering them until they start to see a bit clearer, even though we're not doing computer subjects :)

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