Image:  Mashable Composite/StreaksApp/Forest/Todoist
2021-01-13 10:00:00 UTC
Whether they’re juggling the responsibilities of schoolwork, soccer practice and drum lessons or simply keeping track of their virtual learning assignments without the benefit of a teacher’s watchful eye, kids have a lot on their plates. A simple physical agenda with a calendar might work for some. But, if they already have a phone in hand at all times, an app with reminders and notifications may get more attention. And if the phone is part of their time management problem, as they spend hours on TikTok or playing Minecraft, a productivity app may be an answer to their woes or yours. Here are some expert-recommended time management apps for students. To-Do List Apps: TickTick, iStudiez Pro, ToDoist, Streaks
When is the math test? What’s the due date for that English paper? And is that club meeting on Tuesday or Thursday? These apps will keep a student on top of it all. For virtual to-do lists,
, a former teacher and longtime math tutor who often recommends apps to her students, suggests TickTick, iStudiez Pro and Todoist. They all look similar, she said. She especially likes the ability to color-code subjects, so it’s easy for students to scan and find out what should take priority. TickTick, available for iOS and Android, can include multiple reminders or “annoying alerts” when something is due; clarity on what to do next; white noises for focus; and the ability to share lists, which could be great for group projects. It’s free, or you can sign up for the premium plan for $27.99 a year. , likes Streaks, in particular, for tracking responsibilities. The app, available for iOS, encourages users to build habits and follows their progress over time, Elgersma said, with the goal of creating a “streak” of productivity. With it, students can make sure they’re practicing drums five times a week, turning in their weekly English homework and walking the dog daily. It’s $4.99. Productivity Apps: Flipd, RescueTime, Brili, Forest, and Galarm
It’s easy for kids to get sucked into the vortex that is Instagram or YouTube. These apps ensure kids stay focused on their tasks, said Morris. She recommends Flipd and RescueTime. Flipd, for iOS and Android, is a productivity time tracker that discourages students from switching over to Instagram when they should be studying for that chemistry test. Through a series of social features, the app aims to help students reach goals and milestones by encouraging them to stay on task. It’s free with some in-app purchases. RescueTime, for iOS and Android, shows students exactly how they spend their time on their phone, so they can find out if they need to devote less of it to messaging their friends and more of it on biology. It also can turn off social media, for example, during study periods and lets students set goals and get alerts when they spend a bit too much time on YouTube. A “lite” version is free, but it’s $78 a year with all the features. It’s also a useful Chrome extension for kids . Elgersma suggests Brili, Forest and Galarm for keeping kids on track with their responsibilities. Brili, for iOS and Android, is great for younger kids, ages 6 and up, Elgersma said. The app lets parents set up a series of tasks for kids — from teeth brushing and bedroom cleaning to getting their homework done — and reward them with stars when the work is completed. Kids see all their tasks in one place and are motivated through those star rewards to complete them. It’s free to try for the first month and is $49.99 for an annual subscription. Forest, for iOS and Android, takes a unique approach to productivity — the more a student stays focused on their work, the more virtual and real trees get planted. “The idea is you’re trying to filter out distractions,” Elgersma said. “You can block distraction-laden apps on your phone. You set all the parameters. If you don’t touch any of that stuff, if you don’t allow yourself to get distracted, there is a little virtual tree that grows. If you break your own rules, then it won’t grow.” Eventually, users can watch their own virtual forest grow because of all their good work. The app also plants real trees, based on how well users do. It’s $1.99. Galarm, for iOS and Android, is a social alarm that makes it easier for parents to remind their kids when something needs to get done. So, for example, when a child needs to get their math homework turned in, Galarm reminds the child that it’s time to turn in the assignment. Parents can get an alert that they should check in to ensure it got done. Over time, Elgersma said, parents can stay out of it. “The goal,” she said, “is always to get kids to self-regulate.” It’s free with in-app purchases. Don't forget Google or Microsoft
Of course, the apps within a student’s Google or Microsoft Outlook account can help them manage their time with calendars and other features to collaborate and stay productive. Google Drive, for example, has an embedded scanner so assignments or notes can be stored in one place. And you can make to-do lists with Google Tasks. “If possible, stick within one system,” Morris recommends. It’s also important to be mindful of an app’s cost, especially when kids are the users, Elgersma said. Common Sense Media has a long list of other
. When there are in-app purchases, scroll down to see what the details are, she recommends. “Often it’s just a subscription,” she said. “But if it’s a whole string of $1.99 purchases, they probably are going to push that on your kid. I’d say, ‘No.’”

9 great time management apps for students

Photo:  Maulik Sutariya ( Unsplash )
Are you, maybe, perhaps, spending too much time staring at your phone? Those minutes spent scrolling through social media feeds and beating your latest high scores can really add up, and before you know it, you’re losing hours a week you could be spending more productively. These apps will help you strike a balance. Flipd
Advertisement
Flipd for Android and iOS is both a distraction blocker and a wellness enhancer, with a variety of different components: You can lock away apps you don’t want to use for a while, track your productivity and focus, and connect with friends and family to see who’s the best at avoiding distractions. You can use the app for free initially, with in-app purchases enabling premium features (like the ability to block out apps for more than 30 minutes). You can categorize your phone breaks—setting them up as for work, or for study, or for mindfulness, for example. Over time, you’ll see some neat statistics that’ll show you how many minutes you’ve saved, and how many days you’ve been able to keep up your good habits for. If you want, you can have Flipd give you nudges throughout the day (just like your fitness tracker). Advertisement
Advertisement
If you need some extra motivation to go with your willpower when it comes to leaving your phone alone for a short time, would growing a digital forest of trees help? That’s what you get with Forest for Android and iOS : When you put your phone down, a tree begins to grow, and if you can resist the temptation to pick up your device again before you’re supposed to, you’ll soon end up with a flourishing forest that honors your dedication to the cause. You set the length of time that you want to stay focused and away from your phone, and Forest takes care of the rest. If you manage to hit your target, then an extra tree appears in your forest, and you can track your progress over time (how well you’re doing each day, week, and so on). The app is $2 on iOS and ad-supported on Android, with in-app purchases for cross-device syncing, achievements, app whitelisting, and more. Advertisement
Advertisement
Space for Android and iOS goes beyond the basics of shutting out apps to bring you a more personalized experience. It can give you tips on changing your smartphone habits (based on actual research), and will attempt to work out why you spend too long on your phone: Is it boredom? Is it being too busy? Or is it something else? Alongside these features are the usual tools for locking your phone for set periods and tracking your overall progress. Part of the app enables a Focus Time mode, which actually blocks out notifications from other apps. You can end it whenever you like, but it’s good for short bursts of productivity. More broadly, you can set goals in terms of how much time you spend on your phone each day, and how frequently you unlock it, and then get Space to help you hit those targets. More features can be unlocked with a premium subscription. Advertisement
Advertisement
For a more comprehensive distraction-blocking service that works across your devices, consider Freedom. The downside is that it will set you back $7 a month or $30 a year after the free trial has expired. You might consider that a worthy investment considering just how many devices it supports, and the detailed control it gives you over your distraction-free schedules. As far as the apps for Android and iOS are concerned, Freedom lets you put restrictions on particular apps and even particular websites that you don’t want to spend much time (or any time) on. You have the option of setting certain scheduled times when you need a productivity boost, or starting sessions whenever you need to manually. If you don’t want to pick and choose individual apps, use one of the preset lists available in Freedom. Advertisement
Advertisement
We like the clean look and simple approach of Moment for Android and iOS , which aims to encourage you towards its “less phone, more life” mantra. It’s not quite as overbearing as some other digital detox apps, and instead gently nudges you towards better habits. The process starts by making you aware of just how much time you’re spending on your smartphone and the mobile apps that are sucking up most of your attention. The app includes some useful guided courses too, though some cost extra as in-app purchases. In the case of the Attention Span course, for instance, the app encourages you to listen to one song all the way through, to create a distraction-free space in your home, to spend an hour reading a book, and so on. If you’re looking for a mix between a distraction blocker and a life coach, the Moment app may well have what you need. Advertisement
Advertisement
We should also mention the native options now built into Android and iOS. On Android, we have Digital Wellbeing, available here if it doesn’t come with your phone: the portal covers everything from restricting how many minutes you can open up Snapchat and Instagram per day, to breaking down just how many notifications you’re getting from each of your apps. It’s both a sobering summary of your smartphone use and a tool to help you tackle it. You’re able to set daily time limits for individual apps, if you want to, and there’s also a recently introduced focus mode that just blocks notifications from selected apps when you’ve got something more important to do. The feature called Wind Down, meanwhile, is designed to get you ready for bed. At a set time, it turns your phone’s display gray, turns on the night light feature, and puts your handset in Do Not Disturb mode all at once. Advertisement
Advertisement
Apple added Screen Time to iOS as well, which matches up with Digital Wellbeing pretty much feature for feature. Open up the tool from the Settings app, and you can start with an analysis of your smartphone habits: How much time you’re spending on your iPhone, how many times you’re picking it up in a day, and which apps are piping through the most notifications. It’s all broken down over the last day or the previous week for you. You can then go further and impose time limits on the apps you want to cut back on, either by picking individual apps or by using groups of apps (like entertainment, games, social networking, and so on). As with Android, there’s a tool for getting you ready for bed, too: It’s called Downtime, and it acts as a customized version of Do Not Disturb. You can use it to disable specific apps that you know you shouldn’t be using late at night. Advertisement

The Best Apps for Spending Less Time on Your Phone

Emily Waite
Every night, an hour before bed, I stash my phone inside a drawer in my living room. Most days I retrieve it the following morning, when I'm heading out the door. It's a simple habit, but one that has helped me reclaim some focus from my smartphone—my personal fix for a growing problem that user experience researchers at Google recently called an "attention crisis." Outside the house, though, it's a different story: My phone rarely leaves my side. I reach for it to record an interview, field a slack from my editor, or make plans with family—but succumbing to an Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook binge often leaves me feeling distracted and frazzled. So for the past couple weeks, I've been using an app called Flipd that works a bit like a digital drawer where I can hide my phone. But unlike other time management features currently in vogue, which work by passively tracking the time you spend using specific apps, Flipd requires actual intention to use—a fact that could help users keep their phones tucked away while breaking their impulsive phone-checking habits. Flipd
Flipd's most basic feature is called the "Light Lock." It's a countdown that I activate when I want to avoid my phone. To use it, I decide how long I want to unplug—say, 30 minutes for a coffee date, or two hours for an uninterrupted writing session—and initiate the timer. Fans of the Pomodoro method and similar timeboxing strategies might recognize the approach of compartmentalizing tasks, but that's where the similarities end—and where the app gets interesting. The Light Lock uses two tricks to keep you off your phone. First, it tracks the time you spend disengaged from your device. But crucially, it only logs the time you spend consciously disengaged. "We call these mindful minutes," says Flipd cofounder Alanna Harvey. She compares mindful minutes to a daily step goal. The app's latest feature, Flipd 180, encourages people to spend at least 180 minutes a day intentionally unplugged from their devices. It's not enough to not be on your phone; if you want credit for being offline, you must first proclaim your intention to do so by using the app. Initiating a countdown helps distinguish the time you decide to be off your phone (the positive habit you want to cultivate) from the time you happen to not be using it (which is mostly a matter of circumstance). The second trick is simple, but if you're like me, it might reveal how reflexive and unthinking your phone-checking habits have become: If you exit Flipd or open a different app, your session terminates. No more mindful minutes. You can, however, pause your timer (hence "Light" Lock). If you remember to pause before navigating away, your session remains active. To resume logging mindful minutes, return to Flipd and unpause to re-initiate your countdown. You're probably thinking: If the point is to encourage people to unplug, why even give them the option to interrupt their session? A pause-able timer sounds both counterintuitive and easy to circumvent. In practice, though, I had a hell of a time remembering to pause my timer. The result was a lot of aborted sessions. At first, I thought something was wrong with the app. On several instances, I revisited Flipd at the end of what I thought had been a prolonged break, only to find that I had made it just a few minutes—and on one occasion, a few seconds—into my session. But the app was working fine. Here's what actually happened: I was accessing my phone via the lock screen, briefly using it, and putting it away—without realizing or remembering it. On many phones, mine included, it's possible to launch apps directly from the lock screen. Firing up the camera on iOS is as easy as lifting your iPhone and swiping left. And when I see I've received a message from a friend, I just tap the WhatsApp notification on my lock screen. For me, these gestures are so automatic, I often perform them without thinking. That mindless compulsion is precisely the habit Flipd is designed to confront. "The critical thing about Flipd is it helps you realize how easy it is to be pulled in by your phone," says Georgetown psychologist Kostadin Kushlev, who studies human-computer interaction and its impact on personal well-being, and is not involved with Flipd. Flipd
Calling attention to an unwanted habit is just the first step. Fixing it often depends on understanding how the habit works—the cue that triggers your compulsion and your state of mind when you succumb to it. That's one reason recently unveiled time-management features from tech giants could ultimately fall short. Since May, Apple , Google , Facebook, and Instagram have all released tools that show users how much time they spend inside specific apps. Those tools might help users understand how they use their phones after the fact, but they do little to help them change their habits in the moment. By contrast, Flipd's pause feature introduces friction and mindfulness to an otherwise mindless and friction-free reflex, giving users a moment to consider what they're doing and why. LEARN MORE
Apps like Flipd could serve as a valuable complement to tech giants’ screen-time monitoring tools—assuming they work as intended. (Sample size of one and all that, but I've found Flipd to be helpful: Within a few days, I had stopped launching apps directly from my lock screen.) A large-scale, long-term study of Flipd users would shed more light on its usefulness. Harvey says such an investigation is currently underway. Kushlev is also suspicious of the app's 180-minute goal, which he says might be counterproductive for users who struggle to reach it. Indeed, early fitness trackers prescribed a daily 10,000-step goal, despite the average American logging only half that number— a disparity researchers found could actually discourage activity in some users . Personalized mindful-minute goals, Kushlev says, tailored to a user's habits, might be more effective. More Great WIRED Stories

The Psychology of Flipd, the Digital Detox App

In the past few weeks, two Canadian startups got a boost with rounds of funding. Here’s the latest on who raised how much, and from whom. Flipd raises funding from Ryerson Futures, Figure 1 founders
Toronto-based Flipd , which allows users to block phone distractions during work, has raised an undisclosed round of funding. Investors include Ryerson Futures, Figure 1 founders Gregory Levey, Richard Penner, and Joshua Landy, and Candice Faktor of Faktory Ventures. Alanna Harvey, Flipd co-founder and marketing director, was a communication student at Ryerson University where she was taught by Levey. “As a co-founder of my own startup, I saw some intriguing parallels with the way Flipd is approaching its mission,” said Levey. “And as someone who has taught undergrad and graduate students for over ten years, I definitely see the value of that mission.”
The company — which so far has 130,000 users clocking 150 million minutes on Flipd — plans to expand its platform into classrooms. The app works by telling users it’s time to “Flip Off” their devices for class, and the app gently reminds them not to use their phones during the lecture. Professors can then see data that measures when students did use their phones, and offer incentives or rewards to those that remained attentive. Classcraft raises $2.8 million
Sherbrooke and Montreal-based Classcraft , which is working to gamify the classroom experience, has raised $2.8 million to scale its platform. Whitecap Venture Partners led the funding round with Brightspark Ventures, MaRS Catalyst Fund, backed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Unite, and previous investors following on. Classcraft allows teachers to build roleplaying games based on lesson plans, turning them into online quests overlaid with course content. Each point on maps is created by the teacher, and can include a worksheet, video, or quiz. “Introducing a role-playing game with real-world risks and rewards revolutionized my classroom,” said Shawn Young, Classcraft co-founder and CEO. “Students were more engaged, they worked harder and were more thoughtful in making decisions in and out of the classroom. Not only were they excelling academically, they were stepping up to help their fellow students as well.”
Young started developing Classcraft after his teaching experience in 2013, when he created a basic online role-playing game that he deployed with his own students. The impact of the game dramatically changed the outcomes in his classroom, according to Young. Classcraft — which also has an office in New York — is used in 75 countries, including over 20,000 schools in the US, with more than 2.5 million student users around the world. “Our mission with Classcraft is to reimagine the classroom with collaborative play at the center of the experience,” said Devin Young, Classcraft co-founder and president. “We’re extremely proud of the impact this approach has had with students, particularly around Social Emotional Learning. With this round of funding, our focus now is to build an even richer gaming ecosystem through partnerships and self-paced, personalized learning. We’re very excited about what’s to come!”

Today in funding ($2.8M): Flipd, Classcraft

Techstars

Nine West Holdings

Town Shoes

Seed

Flipd is an app that allows users to block phone distractions so they can pay better attention while they work.

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Alanna Harvey	Techstars, Nine West Holdings, and Town Shoes	Founder, Chief Marketing Officer	Current
Cristian Villamarin		Founder, Chief Executive Officer	Current

Name	Alanna Harvey	Cristian Villamarin
Work History	Techstars, Nine West Holdings, and Town Shoes
Title	Founder, Chief Marketing Officer	Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Status	Current	Current

Wells Fargo Success Story

3M Success Story

Platform Overview

Flipd

Executives

Flipd Management Team

2 Team Members

Discover the right solution for your team