Planbook App Reviews

…but it would crash before I even started developing the thought. I do like that it syncs with my iPad (after getting the iPad app), but whenever I am trying to input plans, it is common that it will crash (as soon as I get moving on some text/or great idea). It even crashes if I try to give feedback through the app. It would be nice if the Standards could be edited/managed better, especially when new Standards are to be adopted next year and you want to notate that you are including future standards in current lessons. I wish I could find something else for planning, but at this point in the year - I have to deal with the poison whose malaise I am expecting. Perhaps I am spoiled by not having to hit Command S every five seconds...

I want to love this, I do. It would absolutely be my favorite plan book if a few things were fixed. Pros: 1. The program is pretty intuitive. I found it easy to use and learn. 2. It auto saves. This is great because it also crashes often. 3. It syncs to my iCalendar. THANK YOU for this! Such a nifty feature. 4. Very easy to share with teachers, students or your principal. 5. Inputting lesson plans is quick and painless. I love how many options I have for input- whether it means going through an entire school year planning just math, or looking only at different Language Arts periods (reading, writing, etc) I have noticed that most plan books are tailor made for single subject teachers. As someone who has taught in a seconadary setting as well as in an elementary setting, I love how versital this is. Still seems better fit for a single subject teaher but can work well for elementary teachers. Cons: 1. It crashes often. For one of the priciest digital plan books on the market, it simply shouldn’t do this. Other options cost half the price and don’t crash constantly. They also don’t have as much potential… but as is, this planbook is pretty comparable to its competitors. 2. Creating “costume days” is a pain if timing is important, which I would imagine for most teachers it is. The times of classes is immediately thrown off when you need a custom day and it seems hard if not impossible to repeat days. (i.e. if this schedule needs to happen every Wednesday for the next 3 months it would be a pain to do.) 3. While this can be used in elementary schools, it would be hard to use for teachers with very irregular scheduling. It is hard to costumize and change subjects daily. Overal, had this been priced at $15 instead of $35, I would be thrilled with the product. It either needs to be flawless or linked to gmail calanders as well for me to be happy with the pricing.

This is a great app, but just needs a few changes. I agree with other reviewers that Planbook should include the option of preloading the Common Core State Standards. I loaded them myself, and it took a lot of time. I also paid for Assigner, thinking that if I entered assignments in Planbook they might sync with Assigner, but I couldn’t figure out how to do this, so I basically abandoned the Assigner app. I am too busy to enter assignments twice. I do appreciate the fact that the Planbook creator, Jeff Hellman, is so responsive to problems, and truly does want to make the app better.

I have been using this app for years and years. I have always loved it and have been grateful to Jeff for his tireless work in updating, improving, and refining the programs on multiple platforms. Over the past year I have used this program to collaborate with my SE co-teachers, share calendars with data teams, and implement our new CC curriculum throughout our district. It has gone beyond an organizational tool for my own classroom and has become an essential part of my academic life. I highly reccomend this app!

Other reviews will give you a better picture of what is good and bad about planbook. It may in fact be the best lessonplan software out there. And I give them full credit for what they’ve created. However, it is rigid, clunky, and often just doesn’t meet my needs as a higher ed teacher with a frequently changing schedule. Sometimes they go above and beyond with too many options that I don’t need, other times they seem to be missing the simplest of ideas. It is especially difficult to change a semester plan once you have created one. Even though it seems like changing options are there. Again, it is a decent program, but this can’t be the best the world can do.

I’ve just started using the app so I’ll provide an update when I get farther into its use. Positives: - I like the overall framework for how the app works. - It provides a nice diary overview of the lessons and you can assign them to units - Decent functionality for adjusting days/times for classes/lessons. ie: I could cancel days where school wasn’t in session, adjust times for individual classes or all of them at once. - You can pull reports on the standards you’ve used, the assessments that were used for the standards, etc. - You can attach anything you need to the individual lessons. Negatives: - The import of the standards is painful. I used the .CSV process which I’m very familiar with. Still ran into problems as it wouldn’t upload a large number of standards at once (I broke them into smaller components) and it usually failed if I had text over 50 characters long in the standard description. I input those manually by copying/pasting into each of the standards afterwards. - The app has frozen a few times. Just restarted it and didn’t have an issue. - Some functions that you think are intuitive aren’t. For instance, I would try to right click on the course name to make changes but wouldn’t get anything. To make a change, I would have to go to the menu bar at the top. Overall - it’s a good concept so far. I didn’t need all of the bells and whistles from many of the other planning software programs/sites and this one fit my overall needs. Basically, clunky in some respects, with some freezing issues; however, if they can provide updates to fix them, it could really be a great program.

I am updating a previously posted review of one star. I found the program frustrating, but to his credit, Jeff Hellman did refund my purchase. I would have rather he take the time to help me with the problem, but he chose to refund instead. So there’s that.

I’ve been using this app for a year now and it’s a great concept but it crashes A LOT! I thought it was because my Macbook Pro didn’t have enough space or power but I just installed it on a brand new Macbook Pro and I have the same problem. I have to disagree with some other reviews I’ve read about having Common Core standards preloaded. Maybe they could just be an option to choose if your school uses them? If I had known this app would crash so much I wouldn’t have spent so much on it! I do really like the iPad app, though! It works so much better!

I don’t think it is user friendly at all. It took me too long to figure it out and now I am having a hard time finding my saved file and using it for future plans.

It’s good. The most annoying thing is that it crashes like crazy! MUST IMPROVE

I’ve been “using” this app for just over a year and I just decided to write a review, mainly out of frustration. First, I love the idea behind this app. The concept has great potential. However, consistent issues keep me from rating it any higher: The app frequently crashes, especially when using the desktop version (I have both the iPad and desktop versions). In fact, it crashes so often that it is predictable; every time I try switching to a custom field it crashes. Cross-platform compatibility is an issue. If I build a lession plan using my iPad and then upload it to dropbox, then the first time I open the file it defaults to a blank planner. The way I have to open a downloaded plan book is to go to file>open recent. Sure, not the biggest deal, but frustrating all the same. When the file does open, however, the customizations I’ve made, such as individually color-coding courses by class section, don’t show up. I tried using it during the fall and spring semesters last year, but always quit out of frustration. I decided to review it today because I’ve had enough. I’ve been trying to create lesson plans for the first and second weeks of school, but after multiple crashes today I’m done. Inconsistencies and frequent crashes keep me from using this app. I’d love a refund!

How can up date the app for the new school year

This is a wonderful app if you are working from one computer. This year, I am lucky enough to have a laptop issued by the district and that has made life easier. Pros: Makes planning and organizing lessons extremely easy. Applying standards is a breeze. Changing this different heading in the lesson to match my subject area (music) has made specific planning great! Cons: Under 10.10 Yosemite, I can’t get the reporting to work. This is extremely important, as I’m required to share lesson plans with my evaluator. Please fix this bug. Also, I can’t seem to change or delete a class without the program crashing.

This application used to be updated frequently. However, the version available from the developer is now two versions ahead of what’s on the App Store. Developer’s website implies app updates will be published to the store — hasn’t been the case. Useful to manage a 6-day rotation, but trying to use centralized units for multiple sections of the same course is not easy to use. Also has annoying bug where when the app opens, it tries to start a new school year rather than just opening the file for the current school year.

Program won’t restart an A/B rotation. Cancel and Adjust button pops up, does nothing, and freezes the whole program.

The website promises more features than the app delivers. For example, although I should be able to save a lesson as a template (according to the website), and I click the button that says “Use as a Template", the template is not applied to the lessons in the course as the dialog box warns me. Several pages in the help site are empty, and a search for “lesson template” resulted in zero hits. I bought the app via the App Store, so I’m on version 4.4, but the website only mentions up to 4.2.2 (and the help document seems to be for an even earlier version - v3.0?), so I wasn’t sure where else to look for help. Response to requests for help from the developer is a far cry from 24 hours…more like several months, so I’ve stopped asking. The Twitter group hasn’t been updated in over a year, and I don’t have enough time to scroll through the FB page posts when I should be lesson planning. That makes me hesitant to join any group (Yahoo or otherwise) to find any information. I got a much quicker response (within a day) when I first asked whether I should buy the app due to development forecast or to wait…of course, the encouragement was to buy, as it would be updated soon after, which turned out to be about 6 months later. However, I’ve recently been told the iOS companion app is not likely to be updated any time soon, which is why I went ahead and bought the desktop version in the first place (I teach mostly from my iPad, but viewing and input into the system is much easier on a real keyboard). The desktop update via the app store also lags considerably behind the updates released to those who buy the app directly off the website. If you format your plans with font styles and colors for easy identification, you won’t be able to view them on the companion iOS app, where visual cues are most helpful. The app has potential, but it needs a lot of work (both technically and in the customer service area) to make it user-friendly. I’d give it one star, but “hate it” seems a bit strong. I still use it, but it’s definitely a struggle. I just don’t want to see $40 go to waste, especially since the App Store wouldn’t give me a refund when I asked for one. (Actually, they never responded.)

Great idea! I prepared to finally organize my semester and (BAM, POW ZING) the month of November has Friday blanked out. Now I would love to not work on Friday during November, however my Dean might object. Please fix this. Uhhh ….quickly because I waited till the last minute to get organized. Thanks

I am a new teacher, and it is wonderful to organize everything and have it planned out with all the colors and the ability to sinc across devices and iCal. However, there is an issue with the weeks at the first week of November…the weeks start on Tuesday all of a sudden and end on Saturdays.

I have used planbook for the previous 2 1/2 school years and loved it. Since I last updated, I am having problems just setting up my planbook. When assigning course times, I had classes disappear from that page. Although I checked Mondays as class days, the program shows “no class” on those days and won’t let me edit times to show that there is class. I teach K-12 music, and I don’t have the time to fight with this. I have also bought a new program and am miserable because it is poor in comparison to what Planbook use to be. Please fix and I will be able to once again consider it a five-star program.

This is the program I use to keep track of all of my lessons and organize my year. I have used this program for three years and have every expectation that I will again. That should tell you how important this program is to me and how much I value its feature set which is well described by the program’s author. That being said Planbook is starting to feel very long in the tooth. There are several small bugs and UI quirks which, while not preventing me from getting what I need to do done, seem like they should have been taken care of a long time ago. This program is updated very infrequently and it shows. I would gladly pay $50 for a snappier, cleaner version of Planbook, just please make it happen. Helmansoft you are lucky that no one else seems interested in competing with you because I would jump ship and give them my $50 gladly if they could deliver the same feature set in a cleaner more intuitive package. This program is not far from being awesome, reducing the amount of clicks it takes me to do common tasks, giving more options for the kind of info presented in different views, making the menu bar menus less confusing, add keyboard shortcuts to the menu bar options. With any program you expect a certain amount of constant iterative progress, but it simply has not come with Planbook, which is a shame because the program as it stands it extremely useful and well made, but it could be better.