Planbook App Reviews

I have used this program for 5 years now. It’s changing times in the middle of the week and I haven’t done anything to cause it. I go to “assign class times” to fix it and it won’t let me. It’s picking random times by itself. I don’t even have a class that starts at 11:07 am or 12:00 am. If this doesn’t get fixed soon, I’m looking for a new program.

They have you believe that common core standards are included but they are not. They tell you to go to this web site which does help you out on downloading the statards into a CVS file. What for, you are unable to import it. Spent 4hrs trying to figure it out. I would say that I am computer savy, but this program is a pain in you know what.

I have the same problem as everyone - Mondays in November through April state they do not have classes scheduled. I also have the rest of the days completely mixed up on the weeks that miss Mondays. This is unacceptable and just as everyone else said I have no time to deal with this while at the same time I need my Planbook NOW. I emailed Jeff a couple of days ago asking to fix this and I hope for a prompt update with a solution. I am going to start looking for a different App soon if this is not resolved within a few days. I have so many good plans to reuse on my previous files that it will be a shame but what else to do?

If I could give it a zero I would. I have attempted to use this three different times. I keep hoping it will be upgraded to actually be useful. Silly me. Do not waste your money! There are free lesson planner online that are so much better. No doubt it is too late to get my money back.

I would love to keep using this app, but it crashed constantly in OS 10.10 and now in 10.11.

The daylight savings time was never fixed. People wrote the owner directly and he never resolved the issue. This is completely ridiculous and unacceptable.

I really want to use this program, and I really want to like it — but it’s cockroach city — bug, after bug, after bug. I’ve spent hours trying to just get my classes set up, and I realize now I should just have cut and paste into a word doc, not to mention the actual class work I still have to do after wasting my time on this. I get one thing working, and then another part goes wonky. How am I supposed to try to export this to show my administration my plans when it doesn’t recognize what days of the week I teach? Why have buttons that are dead links? Just how many times do I have to put in the time I teach a class? If I don’t add my entire schedule perfectly at the start, I can’t go back and add more later? Really? How many secret pathways do I have to figure out to just go back and make notes on what happened in class yesterday so I’ll remember it next term? For those of us trying to promote technology in our schools — this thing sets us back. It confirms the worst fears many teachers have, that it’s all bells and whistles and more trouble than it’s worth. And don’t even get me started on trying to convince admin to promote more digital use while they continue to generate more paper for me to push around. Another forest dead for paper that just gets tossed after it’s looked at. Arrrrggggghhhh. I can’t believe Apple even allows this app to be sold; I thought they had an intensive review process.

When I discovered Planbook a few years ago, it was life changing. My lesson planning became so much less labor intensive. I taught 21 different classes of elementary school music. Much of the lesson could be copied and pasted, but it made it so much easier to type in quickly where we were in the plan or if our lesson veered. We were on a 4 day rotation, and it was wonderful. Just this year an update came… and it was never the same. The day function will never work properly, requiring many steps to get the correct schedule to show up on the correct day. This nuisance has made the program nearly useless. It takes more time to fix the daily schedule than it takes to write the lesson plan out. I’ve tried several online planbook programs, and none of them have been equal to the original Planbook. I’m so sad that it’s being ignored. I just ordered a planbook that is a hard copy. Back to the old way I suppose.

This is just a glorified calendar. If you’ve got a calendar on your computer you can save yourself $35.00. I thought that the price would be a suggestion of the quality and it’s not. I hope this developer hasn’t made any money off hard working teachers!!! I guess the only time it worked was in 2011 and 2012. READ ALL THE CURRENT REVIEWS, NOT THE OLDER ONES.

I was a frequent user but stopped about a year ago when development ceased. Hellmansoft seems to have moved on. I also found that I could easily just create a template in Evernote and make lesson plans that way. It works. The big advantage is that you aren’t tied to a program like this one where I have three years worth of plans and no easy way to extract them. Planbook was always a nightmare when the new year started anyway — it was just impossible to transfer the previous year to the current year. I kept with Planbook hoping for future development that never seemed to come along.