Keep Up on Your Assignments with iHomework

Keeping up with all the assignments from all the different courses that you have as a student can be pretty hard, and everyone forgets to do something at least once in a while. That’s one of the reasons why to-do apps have such a big market and new ones seem to come out every week or so.

But what about a to-do app made specifically for students? The app that we are reviewing today is called iHomework, and just like its name says, it’s meant to be helpful at keeping up with your assignments. Hit the jump to get an overview of the app and how it works.

Getting Started

iHomework is a relatively new app that can help you keep up with your schoolwork. Think of it as a to-do app, but more fit for students. It also comes with a bunch of extra features like support for courses and teachers. It has a Mac version of the app that goes for $2.99 and an iOS app that goes for $1.99. They both work together and let you sync them up.

Work & Reminders

Under the Work tab you are able to see all the assignments that you have due. There’s a small filter bar that lets you see them for the Day, Week or Course. You can also add a new assignment here by clicking the Add button on the filter bar.

The Reminders are similar to the assignments, but they don’t necessarily need to be linked to a course or a deadline. They are just for stuff that you need to do, and you can also set a notification to go along with them and a small note. The notifications will work just like any other push notification on your iOS device, and will come up in your screen even if it’s sleeping.

Adding New Assignments

There are plenty of fields that you can fill in when you are adding a new task. If you already have your courses set up, you can link the assignments to a course, or you can just add a new one right there. You can also add a deadline, notification, title, type of assignment, grade, notes, priority and partners.

The priority goes as Low, Medium and High, and depending on the one you select, the task will be shown in the Work tab with exclamation points. The types of assignment that you can use are Homework, Quiz, Project and Test.

Courses

You can add new courses by going into the Courses field when you are filling a new assignment, or by going into the Courses tab in the main menu of the app. Just like with the assignments, you can fill in a lot of settings within them. You can put in a name, number, teachers, locations, internet links and even fill in the schedule of your classes. You can also customize your courses with preset images that go along with it.

Once you have all your courses setup, you can check them all out under the Courses tab. Here you’ll be presented all of them in a list mode, where you can go into each of them and check all their information, along with all the assignments due for that course. Another thing I found pretty interesting was the grading, which you can keep up with by telling the app what you get on tests, homework and the like.

Teachers and More

Much like with the courses, you can keep track of all your teachers and their information through the Teachers tab. You can add new ones and fill in their email, phone, picture and name, so that you always have that information handy.

There’s also the More tab, where you can find menus like Reading, Completed, Calendar, Types, Sync and the Settings. They are all pretty self explanatory: Reading is for reading assignments; Completed is where the assignments are archived; Calendar gives you a panoramic view of your month; Types lets you edit and add more types of assignments (homeworks, tests, etc.); and sync lets you sync your stuff so that you can view it from your Mac.

Syncing

The syncing process is a bit more confusing than in other apps, but it works. You have to put in a login name and password on your Mac, and then go into your iOS device and start syncing from the More tab, so that you can pair both devices. From then on, everytime you want to sync up, you have to put both devices into syncing mode at the same time, and they’ll automatically find each other and sync up. As I mentioned, it’s not very convenient and it might even work better if it did so through Dropbox, like Day One does. Having to have both devices sync at the same time just isn’t very convenient.

The iOS app is $1.99, while the Mac app is $2.99. You also need to buy both of them in order to use the syncing feature.

Conclusion

I think the iOS app for iHomework works better than the desktop version because it’s mobile and you can use it anytime you’re at class, without having to pull out your computer. The desktop companion is nice for viewing all of your due assignments while you’re at home, but you don’t really need it, and could do fine just with the iOS app.

It’s great as a to-do app focused on schoolwork, but as an overall aid for keeping up with school, like with your schedule or your links, it might not be as useful as other apps. It does a great job at just being a good assignment tracker, but as an overall school helper, it’s not so great.

Do you think these type of apps are more beneficial to a student than just another burden for them? If you are a student, do you use any of these type of apps?