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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

#41

Post by cududa »

> The problem is that my son’s mobile phone is governed by strict parental controls, making this daily lookup an unpopular chore on my side

This was a neat project, but I feel like this is insanely overkill for a solution that is “whitelist the app required for school”.

I sort of feel bad for this kid.

I mean, I graduated high school in 15+ years ago and we had a website that we had to regularly check for assignments and project updates and things. It was a requirement of school. I know these types of sites are even more integral process wise, now a days.

Having a parent that’s such an engineer, that they impose such odd restrictions on phone use (even for a school site), sounds not fun.

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

#42

Post by sourcepluck »

mlinhares wrote: post #40
sourcepluck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't it good they don't know these differences? The fact we know is mostly due to poorly designed UX, not some high level concept that needs to be known. Modern phones are a much better UX for most people.

No, I think it's debilitating, disempowering, wholly unnecessary, and that it would be easily solvable if there existed a will to solve it. It's a cultural issue, not a technical one, I mean.

I didn't mean in the first message simply knowing the difference between tabs and windows and a few other GUI bits and bobs, those were meant to be an example of a larger point. The larger point being the notion that it's fun and possible to be a combative, pro-active, "liberated" computer user.

The empowerment of computer users is diametrically opposed however to the interests of Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, etc etc. The ideal computer user for them is one who knows nothing, except exactly what they need to know to keep clicking, commenting, sharing, liking, spewing out their personal details, and fishing out the credit and debit cards.

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

#43

Post by space_oddity »

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 project itself is super cool. It's a modern take on managing schedules, but it feels more deliberate than just another app notification

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

#44

Post by space_oddity »

soysandwhich wrote: post #36
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…

[dead]

Ah, the classic "we managed just fine back in the day" argument

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

#45

Post by jeroenhd »

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…

Schools are different all over the world. I believe rooms were assigned to teachers as much as possible, but not every teacher needed a room all day every day so there was the occasional change-up. For instance, sometimes biology/chemistry/physics needing the few lab rooms for experiments, and those had to be scheduled in somehow. That also caused other rooms to bump every now and then.

Generally, a teacher not showing up was no real reason for skipping class (no matter how much urban myths said otherwise) but if the absence was known in advance we'd get a free hour. Most kids used those for some extra homework time or to just hang out, unless the free hour lined up with the start or the end of the day.

We didn't really have study hall, just the normal areas in school that you'd also hang out in during breaks (or holes in the schedule, as older kids with personal schedules occasionally had).

In university this rarely happened, most people would leave after about 30 minutes because a lot of them traveled half an hour or more to get there in the first place. People were a lot less willing to abandon classes once they were paying out of their own pocket for them.

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

#46

Post by jeroenhd »

soysandwhich wrote: post #36
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…

[dead]

You managed, good for you! Thankfully, we got it better, and kids these days have it even better. I don't see how that's a bad thing, every generation should strive to make things better for the next ones.

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

#47

Post by jeroenhd »

wolpoli wrote: post #15
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…

Imo it should be the school's responsibility to stick a notice on the classroom itself or at least send an email, rather than expect each and every student to check an app every day. I hadn't been a high school student in a while through.

I agree that there should be a physical fallback or sorts, but I think it's helpful to be prepared just in case. If the school is too lazy to display schedule changes at school for some reason, the app becomes a necessity and that's just stupid.

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

#48

Post by Moru »

zellyn wrote: post #39
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.

At my high school in South Africa, in the late 80s/early 90s, we had a two-week schedule, so you had to remember not only which day it was, but whether it was week one or week two!

In same timeframe in Sweden we had one schedule with eight different classes every day except the few days when we had a lesson that was two "blocks" long. Everything was in 40 min blocks with a clear pattern of breaks between. We got to copy that down each year by hand on graph paper making the lines and everything. This lead to us mostly knowing our schedules by the second week and hardly having to look at it.

Fast forward a few years and my daughter has 2 different lessons per day, it's communicated with an app and she has to look at it at least twice a week after half a year to figure what day what was.

The best thing ever to only have two subjects per day so you can actually concentrate on the subjects and not try and fail at multitasking the whole time...

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

mlinhares wrote: post #40
sourcepluck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't it good they don't know these differences? The fact we know is mostly due to poorly designed UX, not some high level concept that needs to be known. Modern phones are a much better UX for most people.

[deleted]
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