On the second day of school, Community High School sophomore, Kelsey Albig, sat in her room brainstorming ways to be more organized this school year. She hated planners and had trouble with forgetting homework in the past, so she knew she needed a change. On a whim, she searched “homework app” in the App Store and found the perfect app called “The Homework App” by Eco Designs LTD.

To use this app, the student puts in homework assignments with their due date and the subject and it makes a convenient list in the app. The subjects can be color coded to the colors of school folders and alarms can be set as reminders of homework that will soon be due. There is a calendar feature that allows someone to see when assignments are due in a different way. Also, there is a section that shows all of the completed assignments.

The Homework App has overall good reviews, but has had trouble with crashing in the past. Ruby Lowenstein, a CHS sophomore, was loving the app until it crashed and she lost all of the homework that she had put in. Natalie Bullock could not even open the app without it crashing. This could be due to an old version of the app or an old version of the iPhone. Luckily, you can sync the app so that if it crashes, you can restore your data.

The classic method of organization, the planner, worked well for Junior Katie Gerdenich for the first few months of school but eventually, she gave up. The planner was effective while she was using it since she was able to organize her thoughts in one place, but getting it out of her backpack at the end of class was enough for her to abandon this approach.

Elonah Kirk tried using a planner in past years but found that committing her work to memory was a better strategy. She goes from class to class thinking about what work she has to do and rarely forgets anything. In past years she would lose her planner or forget to write her work down but while using her memory she has never had those problems.

The Homework App is essentially a modern planner. “It’s like a planner but upgraded,” Albig said. It eliminates the need to carry around a planner or remember everything from the day, while still having a convenient list of work. There is no fear of losing work because of the sync feature and all that is needed is a smartphone.