Get Organized, Free Digital Course Planner
Get Organized is a digital course planner for students of all ages that offers a lot more than just the standard course planning that physical planners offer. It is naturally possible to add terms and courses to the planner. That's easily done at anytime. Difference becomes visible straight away. A course is defined by its title, term, start and end date, class days, room number and credits. Get Organized furthermore can keep track of instructors (name, email, phone, Office location and hours), the grading scale and required textbooks.
In addition, courses can be displayed with their own color to make the identification easier. The digital course planner supports events and assignments that can be tracked as well. Assignments are directly linked to a course, while events are not. Assignments are homework and other activities directly related to courses, events are summer parties for instance.
The application can display information about events, assignments, grades and courses in different ways in the interface. A list view and calendar view are available. They appear to only display information about events and assignments at this point in development. It would make sense to add information about courses at least to the calendar view as well.
Filters are available at the top, for instance to only display overdue assignments in the calendar.
The application can keep track of grades which are added by completing assignments.
Another interesting option is the ask the instructor button. This button can be used to directly email the course instructor if an email address has been added to the data set.
Feature Overview
- Keep track of terms, courses, and assignments
- Add instructors, textbooks, and weighted grading to assignments
- Keep track of grades for each assignment once it’s completed
- Keep track of overall grades throughout terms in the Grade Book
- Organized your social life with events as well
- Color code any view by course (or event category), due date, or priority
- Need help with an assignment? Click “Ask” to start an email to the instructor
- View assignments and events in two views: List View - Sortable, colorful, scrollable, Calendar View - See the month laid out for you and never forget when things are due
- The Mini Calendar in the lower-left corner helps you quickly see if something is due on a particular day (the day is marked red), or if things are due by you’ve already completed them and need to turn them in still (the day is marked blue)
Get Organized is compatible with Windows, Linux and Macintosh systems. The program requires Java (Java Runtime Environment) 1.6 or higher to be installed on the system. The program is available as a beta version that can check and install updates automatically.
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Years ago this would have been an awesome program. Today, though, I can do most of this on my Google Apps calendar with the added benefit of access anywhere and automatic sync to my phone. There’s just no way a stand alone app can compete with that.
Actually, Get Organized was developed specifically to not compete with things like Google Calendar or iCal. Its functionality is completely different. They are useful calendar tools, but Get Organized is not a calendar tool by itself. It is a tool that, as a side effect, provides a calendar, yes. This is it’s only real similarity to the Google Apps you referenced. The very significant difference is that this program’s aim is at the student, schedule organization (tailored specifically to a student’s course workload, not just a meeting or an appointment), and grading.
I use Get Organized for my academic work and Google Calendar for my social schedule. Though you make a good point that Google Apps is mobile (a nice advantage), beyond that the two applications provide very separate features.