As students progress through high school, the workload increases significantly, making time management and productivity essential. Many students at Mater Dei High School face challenges with procrastination, meeting deadlines, and staying organized, as they also want to balance school with their personal lives. To address these challenges, students turn to various digital tools to help manage their workflow.
According to a recent survey with 30 students at Mater Dei, 66% of students use applications to manage their productivity. The most commonly used app is the required Canvas app, which features a to-do list and calendar, allowing students to track their assignments and mark them as completed.
Sophomore Olivia Wills shares her method of managing productivity, asserting that the school has provided a great application for students to manage their assignments with ease.
“Canvas is really helpful,” Wills said. “It’s handy to have an app to keep track of everything for you, but in group work, it can be challenging since you have to merge and talk to your partners.”
However, many students still seek more comprehensive workflow solutions. One such popular tool is ChatGPT, which some students use to quickly answer questions and organize tasks.
Senior Khoa Dang’s productivity has been enhanced by using ChatGPT to manage his schedule and tasks.
“It helps me keep track of most things,” Dang said. “In school, ChatGPT has been very helpful. I’ve been doing my work pretty fast compared to last year because of it.”
When asked what features they would like in an ideal workflow app, students prioritized having a to-do list for an easier assignment managing experience, along with a planner to help them stay on top of the deadlines. In addition, some students also find digital sticky notes, or note-taking sites to be very helpful since they would be able to create reminders and personalize their managing system. Some other features that are suggested by students from the survey for workflow management are calendars, teamwork calloration, time blocking & timeline features.
Dang shares his opinion on workflow app features after experimenting with several different applications throughout his academic career.
“I think a workflow app should be transparent and divided into smaller sections, like how we break down cycles in the newspaper class,” Dang said.
Beyond Canvas and ChatGPT, there are numerous other apps that provide features that can improve student productivity. Notion offers a powerful combination of note-taking, to-do lists, calendar integration, and project management. While some students may find it overwhelming, it can be customized for simplicity.
Launched in 2016, Notion’s users, according to Capterra, is “the most innovative all-in-one productive tool and highly customizable software.” Senior Roman Manner talks about his experiences with the software and how it provides structure to his academic life.
“Notion is a really great tool if you want to organize your life in a structured and consistent way,” Manner said. “It’s like a more complex version of Reminders. It takes a lot of commitment, but I like it.”
SNO Flow is another app designed for workflow organization, but some students believe it could be improved by breaking tasks into smaller steps. SNO Flow is described as an effective collaborative site designed especially for the academic newsroom. It helps with tracking story elements though workflow, grading, managing deadlines, and organizing content. All these features are designed to help journalism classrooms run smoothly and efficiently.
Senior and Scarlet Scroll Editor-in-Chief Charlotte de Leon has been using SNO Flow for three years now as the main tool to manage her own workflow as well as other members’ submissions in Newspaper.
“SNO Flow really helps Newspaper as a whole to function by organizing our stories so that everyone can clearly determine what their assignment is, and turn them in to editors and Ms. Howard in a relatively easy way,” de Leon said.
While SNO Flow is designed for collaborative work, Google Calendar is a perfect tool for students to manage their productivity and deadlines. It is a digital calendar created by Google that is free, easily accessible, and automatically syncs to the user’s Google account.
Even though Canvas has a built-in calendar within the app, Junior Chris Canzoneri is still using Google Calendar as a tool to manage his schedule more effectively.
“I think Google Calendar is very effective for time management and productivity,” Canzoneri said. “Advantages include reminders and check-ins that are given to you automatically. I would highly recommend it to other students.”
Another option that is very common for most students at Mater Dei are to-do lists. Canvas has done a great job of not only including the calendar in the app but also a to-do list. Students can easily track any assignments, deadlines and tasks that need to be completed in the day.
Junior Joshua Jorgensen has had three years of using the to-do list to help him stay on top of his assignments and tests.
“I think it’s highly effective, but the main drawback is that it only displays tasks for the day rather than upcoming assignments,” Jorgensen said. “If you have a big project approaching and it doesn’t appear in advance, that could be a major oversight.”
As the demands of high school continue to grow, students continuously look for the right tools that best suit their needs. While no single app may be perfect, a combination of these tools can help students stay on top of their workload, reduce procrastination, and achieve a better balance between academics and personal life.
