Need timer/bell software to keep me on track - recommendations?

[KeepItGoing]

I'm about to enter my 15th year of homeschooling. I started out intending to unschool, and have been steadily increasing the amount of structure in my school ever since, so I've seen both sides of this. I am now hoping to find some software (Mac compatible) that can keep our school on track. (No smartphone, but iPad is a possibility.)

 

My situation is that I will have 3-4 high schoolers and one middle schooler (my own son and daughter and some friends) in the fall, all at different levels, and it's critical that we stay on task and on schedule if we are going to accomplish what we want to accomplish. Plus, I get passionate about whatever I'm doing (whether teaching or not) and tend to "forget" to call a halt to what we're doing, so my poor students never know what's coming and when they'll get a break or how much they'll have to do in a day. The strict timer system is at least half to protect them from my enthusiasm. It will also encourage me to keep giving consistent effort to every subject, not just the ones that I'm enthusiastic about at the moment.

 

I'd like some simple software with an easy interface for me to tell when I want timers to sound on different days. I've found some timers but most of them are clunky - for example, I don't want to have to set several separate timers for a specific schedule. The current timer I'm using, every timer has to be set separately: ring at 10:50 on MTThF, ring at 11:00 on MTThF, ring at 11:35 on W, ring at 11:45 on W - very time-consuming and hard to get right. Plus, if I decide to use the Wednesday schedule on Tuesday one day, there's no way to use the timers short of going in and changing every single timer for that day - and then changing it back afterward, which is impractical. I'd much rather be able to enter a single command that meant, "Use the schedule called "Wednesday" today rather than the one called "Daily."

 

Can anyone recommend anything to me? Thanks so much - and my students will thank you even more.

Edited July 20, 2012 by KeepItGoing

[greenvneck]

:bigear::lurk5:

[KeepItGoing]

One thing I've figured out is that it isn't a timer system I need - it's an alarm system. That makes a big difference in searching.

 

I've found something called Alarm Clock Pro which is better than the timer I have been using and has some powerful ways to set alarms, but I can't find a way to group alarms together (and I'd need something like 20 per day!) so that I can say "use this set today" or "use this set tomorrow," although I could set up a non-modifiable system. And this one isn't free after the 15-day trial period, either. So I'm still hoping.

 

By the way, greenvneck, I'll have a UNT student this fall, and we have an aerospace engineer in the family. :)

[KeepItGoing]

I've also been searching for school bell software, but so far have found nothing Mac-compatible so I haven't really evaluated any of those.

 

I've downloaded something called iMOnTime, which looks very good. I can set ALL the time-to-start-class alarms at one time: at all these times (8:30, 9:30, 10:45...) play this sound, but only on these days of the week and during these months, starting on August 27th and ending on June 30th. Then I can de-activate that during holidays, for instance. That looks easy - and I can copy that alarm for a Wednesday (say) and make slight modifications when needed, so that looks really good.

 

I am a bit confused about some of the things - I can't figure out how to make certain modifications - but maybe that's an issue of having only a demo version. I will play with it a little more, but if it works the way it looks like it works, I think it would be worth the $18. (I doubt I'll find anything for free, and that's okay, but I'd hate to have to pay if it doesn't do what I need.)

[Leav97]

Have you thought about emailing Alarm Clock Pro and seeing if they would add a feature?

[fourcatmom]

I've also been searching for school bell software, but so far have found nothing Mac-compatible so I haven't really evaluated any of those.

 

I've downloaded something called iMOnTime, which looks very good. I can set ALL the time-to-start-class alarms at one time: at all these times (8:30, 9:30, 10:45...) play this sound, but only on these days of the week and during these months, starting on August 27th and ending on June 30th. Then I can de-activate that during holidays, for instance. That looks easy - and I can copy that alarm for a Wednesday (say) and make slight modifications when needed, so that looks really good.

 

I am a bit confused about some of the things - I can't figure out how to make certain modifications - but maybe that's an issue of having only a demo version. I will play with it a little more, but if it works the way it looks like it works, I think it would be worth the $18. (I doubt I'll find anything for free, and that's okay, but I'd hate to have to pay if it doesn't do what I need.)

 

 

I am assuming this is just for a Mac? Is there anything comparable for Windows?

 

Thanks:001_smile:

 

ETA: I found one called School Bell for Windows. It looks like you can customize it to meet your needs.

Edited July 19, 2012 by fourcatmom

[Alte Veste Academy]

Sorry. Never mind. Missed it in your OP.

[greenvneck]

By the way, greenvneck, I'll have a UNT student this fall, and we have an aerospace engineer in the family. :)

 

Very cool! I met someone at Freshman Orientation who fits that description, I wonder if it was you!

[KeepItGoing]

I met someone at Freshman Orientation who fits that description, I wonder if it was you!

 

I didn't go with my daughter to orientation last week, so it wouldn't have been me (though you could have met my daughter, I guess).

[greenvneck]

Well, we actually went the first week it was held, in early June, so it couldn't have been you even if you had gone! :D

[KeepItGoing]

I emailed the iMOnTime people last night, letting them know what I needed to be able to do. In particular, I'd like a separate volume control from the rest of the computer (so that the alarm will sound even when the sound is off), a sound that continues for a specified time period or until stopped (rather than a single beep), and (ideally) increasing volume while sounding, so that it won't be too loud when we're right by the computer but will get loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the house. (I also would like it to sound even when the computer is asleep, but I didn't mention that in my email.)

 

I asked whether there was a way to write a script to accomplish these goals. I also figured that I wasn't the only one who could use this, so I hoped that my question might encourage them to eventually work it into their product.

 

I didn't expect their answer: They're going to try to incorporate some of these features into a new release, due out in about two weeks! They asked if I wanted to help test the new release, too, and said they'd contact me for more information about what I was looking for.

 

So, Leav97, you're absolutely right about contacting a company - but I had no idea it might be possible to work something like that out so quickly!

[KeepItGoing]

The company has not contacted me since then, so either they won't be incorporating this or they don't need to talk to me about it before they do.

 

The good thing about iMOnTime is that I can set it to use certain schedules on certain days. I start a "class starts" reminder, for example, and set that to go off at several times (say, 8:30, 9:30, 10:40, and so forth) on specific days (say, MThF between August 27th and June 1). Then I set a separate "class ends" reminder. I can set other "class starts" reminders for Tuesdays, and for Wednesdays, with the abbreviated schedules that we need on those days. And I can distinguish between these reminders by making a category called "normal days" for one, and "1:45 Finish" or "11:30 Finish" for another. So far, so good. (Or, if I don't minding having the same thing happen (same sound etc) for the beginning and end of class, I can combine these all into one reminder.)

 

But I've just realized that if I decide one Monday to use a Tuesday schedule, it's not that easy. I can duplicate the normal Tuesday schedule and then modify the dates to say that I want to use this new reminder today only. But then I would have to go in to the normal Monday reminder and turn off the reminder sound for today (or I'll end up with both sets of reminders all day). The trouble with that is that I will then have to remember to turn it back on after the day ends, or next Monday I won't have any reminders sounding at all.

 

I have to decide whether there is an advantage, here, to using this system over just keeping a timer in the room and setting it every time, or just remembering to use the clock. I'm wavering on this point. The fact that we won't always be working in the same room makes me think that the timer has the advantage - but that's one more thing for me to think about, every day, which is something I wanted to avoid.

 

This just doesn't seem as if it would be that difficult to program, as long as you just want the bells and don't care about the user interface. Maybe my son would take on the challenge. I'll need to talk to my husband about that... I'll also take another look at the other program I mentioned above.