Product Review of Planboard

A good educator is responsible for motivating learners to reach their full potential; Planboard helps educators in this regard. By removing unnecessary distractions, it lets educators focus their energy on the essentials of teaching by helping educators to manage lesson schedules and activities. It is easy to set up and does not require any software installations. From gross yearly projections to weekly reports and detailed reminders, Planboard gives you access to personal plans anytime, on any device.
Website: https://www.chalk.com/planboard/
What Users Love About the App
“My favorite thing about Planboard by Chalk is that it is a free platform for writing lesson plans. It is so simple and easy to create a class schedule and to even include blocks or time periods where you have lunch or planning. It makes the entire planning process so much easier.”
“I really love the fact that I can include standards for my county and attach those standards to each lesson plan as well as attach files to each lesson plan. My favorite part about this program is that it allows you to copy lessons from past days over two new days, this means that if you were teaching the same class over you are able to copy your lesson plans to a new day.”
“It is a timesaver and my administration loves it because my lesson plans look professional. Even their mobile app is really nice. Planboard offers so many free features, most of which other planning websites and programs charge a lot for, and they do it all with such excellent customer service. If you ever have questions about the platform, feel free to ask them because they respond fast and with expert advice.”
“I love the feature of creating lessons in a sequential unit format, and then the system automatically pushes those lessons (in sequence) into the time slots for each class/section! It’s absolutely fantastic! I also like how there is an attendance.”
“Chalk makes it easy for me to plan my units and daily lessons, with the ability to shift them forward and backward, scheduled days off, and save and reuse units between class years. I find it very helpful that I can open my plans on any smart device. It moved me away from using paper plans or multiple Word documents to track my plans.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“I have had the unfortunate experience of having lesson plans be erased because of the Planboard autosave feature not working as promised.”
“When you’re using D2L Brightspace or Google classroom, adding another tool like chalk just seems to be a waste of time. I am not going to input everything twice when it’s already in my Google Gradebook.”
“I wish that it was easier to save all lesson plans at the end of the school year in one quick move. Being able to download and upload them a year to year would be great.”
“I found it hard to get started. This year I am teaching SERR, found it a bit tricky to track the various levels I teach.”
“While the website works well, the app needs a lot of work. It is very confusing to use and difficult to see everything that is needed. I find it difficult to go back when looking at specific grades and specific classes while using the app.”