Pastel Planner

About

The 2015 Techhub Challenge - run by the New Zealand Royal Society and the Institute of IT Professionals - was taken up by Year 10 pupils from schools in the Wellington region. The aim was to design an app to help them at school. The Pastel Programmers were the winning team from St Mary's College, and their prize included collaborating with a small team of developers from Datacom to bring their ideas to life

Pastel Planner 1.0 is the result.

How to use the app

Home

The home screen gives you a snap-shot of your day and things to do, and an inspirational quote to pick you up when times get testing. Tapping on the quote gives you a new random quote. Below this, your current and next subjects are displayed. Also on the home screen, a sample of your homework is displayed, with the items due soonest displayed first.

Timetable

The timetable screen displays subjects and homework for the choosen day in chronological order. Subject entries display the class time and room, while homework displays the due date, time due from now, and a progress indicator in the form of a carrot, to let you know how much work is remaining. You can view the timetable calendar in either week or month mode.

Homework

The homework screen lists all your homework entered into the app. You can use the filters at the bottom of the screen to display homework sorted by due date or progress, and also completed homework. You can tap the '+' to create a new homework item. Swiping left on a homework item brings up the option to delete the entry. Tapping on a homework entry in the list takes you to a detailed view of the homework, where you can edit the entry, add photos and update the progress slider.

Subjects

The subjects screen lists all your subjects entered into the app. You can tap the '+' to create a new subject. You will need to have created a term to be able to add subjects though (see Terms below). Swiping left on a subject brings up the option to delete the entry. Tapping on a subject in the list takes you to a detailed view of the subject, where you can edit the entry, or add,remove and view homework for the subject.

Terms

The terms screen is where you enter your schools term dates. When you create a new subject, the subject times you create use the dates you enter for the term to decide the start and end dates of the timetable entries. To create a new term, tap the '+' button, and enter a name and start and end date. Swiping left on a term brings up the option to delete the entry.

Websites

The websites screen allows you to browse the internet, and bookmark any websites you visit frequently. Tapping on a website list item takes you to that website. If you browse to a new website, you have the option to bookmark it. Here you can give it a user friendly name so you can visit it later. Swiping left on a website in the list brings up the option to delete the entry (except Google, which is fixed).

Contact us

If you have any questions or feedback regarding the app, please contact us at - mobile@datacom.co.nz