It is over ten years since I first decided to write Handy Homework – Spelling Bee Games and Tests. Handy Homework – Our Story outlines how it all came about and all the changes and developments over the decade. I started to write the app when my younger children were in primary school. I am the mother of 5 children with a fifteen year gap between eldest and youngest.

Time Management

Working full time it can be difficult for parents to keep up with everything.  My children’s education was always very important to me and so was their social development.  All of the children participated in sport, learnt musical instruments and some joined associations such as the guides and one volunteered for the Wandecla Rural Fire Brigade.

It was time consuming to take two of the boys and one girl to footy practice (at different times)  and Saturday games so time management was important.

 

My eldest daughter was a gymnast and to take part I had to take her to gymnastics in Mareeba, where the nearest gymnastics club was, and this was a drive of fifty kilometres. Eventually, Tamara would finish school in Herberton and take the school bus to Atherton. My mother met the bus and with husband Leif, drove Tamara to Mareeba (only 30 kms) and dropped her at the Gym Club. They then had to find something to do in Mareeba for an hour and a half (often doing a shop at Coles (there was only Woolworths and IGA in Atherton). They would pick her up and drive her home to Herberton. We have a lot to thank my mother for. After a year or two there was a new gym club in Atherton.

Handy Homework needed

Unsurprisingly I and they often found the weekly homework tasks exhausting and frustrating. When my youngest son James was nine, he knew how to avoid learning his weekly spelling list words. I would manage to sit down with him and his word list, but then he wanted a drink. Then he had to go to the toilet and of course next it was time for footy practice. There had to be a better way. Fortunately I had already started to write apps and thought a spelling app might be the answer.

Making mobile apps

Making mobile apps was what I decided to do as I like living in Far North Queensland and love the Atherton Tablelands. Not wanting to move to a big smoke but keen to get into the forefront of technological development and opportunities, I decided to “get into” writing apps, about the time my last child started school.

My day job – Cath’s Computer Solutions 

This was something I could do and stay living in Herberton in the hills.

Computer sales and repairs had been my livelihood for twenty years but it would be good to do something more challenging and something that could bring in more money. I first went into computers because I wanted to do computer graphics and programming but got a bit side-tracked with raising five kids and family life. When my youngest child Abby started school, I decided that now was the time to get into app development. I could not afford to give up the day job of travelling the Atherton Tablelands and solving computer problems. I called the new app writing business AppMum.

Making mobile apps with AppMum

Hurdles and Hoops

It is over 12 years now and the learning curve has been steep.

Xcode

The first hurdle was to learn the programming language for Apple Store Apps. At the time you had to write apps in what was called Xcode (objective C and then Swift). Xcode could only be done on an Apple Mac computer so I had to get an Apple Mac computer. I had studied coding and programming when I was at James Cook University in Townsville but I was a bit (or a lot) rusty. I did a lot of on-line tutorials (only the free ones) and produced some basic apps after a few months.

Graphics and Sound

As well as programming I needed to learn how to produce good graphics and images so I trained myself on Photoshop and Illustrator and did some work on animation. The first app was an “Australian Matching Game” where the player had to turn over cards to find two the same. There were animals, flowers and places. Abby who was four at the time said the words to match the images. We had to learn about recording and reproducing sound.

Apple’s App Store

Making mobile apps was just the first step. The next big hurdle was getting the app on the App Store. This was like jumping through a hundred hoops. Progress seemed to be being made but then Apple announced something was wrong or in their words “there was an issue”.

Registered App Developer

You have to be a registered developer which again costs money. You have to sort out GST if you are selling in the Australian Store. Because children are likely users of an app you have to have a Security and Privacy Policy. These things have to be submitted to Apple.

Bugs

Once the app is on the store and people start using it, you find there are bugs in the program and a revision is needed. All of this is time consuming and often frustrating.

Handy Homework Prototype

I did a Homework Helper mainly because as already stated, getting my son James to do his homework was a pain. The Homework Helper tested the weekly spelling lists he got from Herberton State School and also tested his times tables. This meant he could do his spelling and tables on my phone or on an Ipad when he was in the car or on his way to footy practice.

Google Play Store for Androids

I decided to try to get my apps onto the Google Play Store as well as the Apple Store. This was a whole new ball game. Google Play Store operates in quite a different way to the Apple Store. Lots more hoops to jump through.

Social Media

For both stores it is necessary to publicise your app as much as possible. You have to use Social Media to get people interested. Your web site needs to be professional and attract as much traffic as possible and one of the ways to do that is to write blogs. Then you have to know what keywords you should use and what keywords people type in when they are looking for information. If you get this right more traffic comes your way.

I attended a Google Seminar at the Cairns Convention Centre and all the pitfalls were outlined. It was beneficial but Google emphasised the importance of paid advertisements. Google have a vested interest in advertising. I will advertise and pay for an ad but not until I am sure the app is working and is bug free.

Handy Homework Our Story – Technology and Marketing

Handy Homework version one

For this version I kept pretty closely to the actual process we went through with Herberton State School. Each week my child brought a list of words to learn and put into context in a sentence. There is a test at the end of the week. The app allowed you to set up an account for a child or more than one. There were several grades to cater for a child progressing through the school system. When the list came home, we typed in the words and the meaning and entered a sentence to show how the word was use and we recorded the word and the sentence. James could practise his spelling anywhere.

As as bonus I added a times tables section so they too could be tested.

Handy Homework version 2

The first biggest development was when I added the feature where you could simply photograph the list avoiding keying in. I tried to keep up with technological developments and used enhanced graphics and improved the look of the app to make it more professional.

Handy Homework different languages

My mum suggested expanding the app and having foreign language versions. This is apparently marketing but did require some technical skills. The first foreign language we did was Swedish. This was because Leif is Swedish and it is his first language so we felt confident the Swedish would be correct. There were some technical issues in that we would need to incorporate the Swedish keyboard as there are extra letters in Swedish:-  å, ä and ö.

There was also a more practical problem of getting the app into the Swedish app store.

Handy Homework multi language version

When researching the Swedish education system, we found out that to matriculate Swedish students have to be competent in Maths, Swedish and English. I developed the app so that several languages were offered in the basic English app. You could choose your language or more than one. Presently you can choose English, French, German, Spanish and Swedish.

For parents who want to encourage their children to become bi-lingual, this is useful function. In Florida, English and Spanish are both major languages. In Canada French and English are national languages. Here in Australia, foreign language teaching is languishing, at least in Far North Queensland. When I started at Atherton State High School, I did two years of Italian. There is a big Italian community on the Tablelands and you can still hear Italian spoken in the supermarket at Mareeba. None of my children have had the opportunity to learn a foreign language. One term of Japanese does not a linguist make.

My mum did French, German and Latin at school in England. Now in retirement she is learning Russian on Babbel and Spanish on Duolingo. She just found out you can only have four foreign language keyboards on an Android phone. She had to get rid of French and German to add the Russian and Spanish keyboards to English and Swedish. Foreign language keyboards seem limitless on her Imac and Ipad. I think Handy Homework in Russian is a long way off.

Полезное домашнее задание 

It does not roll off the tongue. According to Google translate it is pronounced

Poleznoye domashneye zadaniye

 

до свидания на сегодня

do svidaniya na segodnya

Bye for now