Digital Student Planners - What are people using?

[scubagirl]

Morning all,

 

We have 1:1 iPads at my 3-18 school and are looking at replacing paper-based student planners with digital ones (preferably without spending a fortune). What are other people using? We have iSAMS as our MIS so it would need to integrate with that (obviously), to prevent me from having another system that needs administering separately

 

Boomerang is on my radar at the moment.

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

ScubaGirl

[edmokeski]

We're in almost exactly the same place, with the exception that we're 11-18. In addition to iPads and iSAMS, we're also a G Suite school, so something that talks to Classroom would be a big plus. The same topic has been coming up for us. Looked around at BETT and didn't find anything that impressed me. Printing planners is no small expense, and as everyone has an iPad, it seems an obvious solution, so I'd also be really interested to hear what others are using for digital planners. The one thing we definitely don't want is another all-singing all-dancing (all faff) VLE.

 

We had a student focus group discussion about what they'd want from such a thing recently, and got some really useful feedback, so I'd definitely recommend one if you've not had a chance to do that yet.

[scubagirl]

Hi edmokeski,

 

That's really interesting. I thought there must be other schools in a similar position. We're also a G Suite school, although apart from cloud-hosted email, I'm not honestly sure how much Google Drive and the apps get used, as we also have Microsoft Office on the PC's and iWork apps on the iPads.

 

I didn't get to BETT this year - too much work to go! Couldn't agree more re: VLE!

 

That's great, feedback, thanks so much for your input.

[eean]

What is the purpose of the planner?

Do you want the planner to automatically take care of everything for the student e.g populate it with their homework, events etc... Effectively, organise the student.

Or, do you want to teach the student how to organise themselves? A skill that will help them in life.

 

If it's the former, then yes, you'll need a solution. If it's the latter, then perhaps you should just teach the students how to use their calendar feature properly. e.g The students are expected to write their homework into their diary, just like they would have done with a paper diary. If you set up groups correctly and teach staff how to send calendar invites (good luck with that!), they could send groups of students invites about events they need to attend.

 

What's lacking from such a system is the teacher monitoring. Usually, a tutor would check and sign a diary every week to make sure they're filling it in (invariably they don't though!). So, perhaps, students need to publish their diaries and post a link so a shared doc or something so the teachers can easily check.

[TechMonkey]

Milk student planner(https://milkstudentplanner.com) often comes up. I've not used it but we are looking at it as an in between solution between paper and full VLE.

[Ecalpemos2000]

We are an iSAMS school and use Homework4 by Concept4. Links to iSAMS no problem. Give the Northern office a call, ask for Alex Buck. Great team they have there.