Ashish's Homework Guard

Tick off who handed in homework each morning, then print a card each student carries showing how many days in a row they have kept it up.

Who this is for

Ashish Deshmukh runs a coaching institute above a chemist's shop in Sitabuldi, Nagpur. Ninety-two students across four batches, three teachers besides himself. The moment is 7.05 in the morning, Physics batch, forty children filing in, and Ashish standing at the door trying to remember who has skipped homework three days running and who only skipped yesterday because of a wedding at home.

How the job is done today

There is a long register with student names down the left and dates across the top. Teachers tick it when they remember, which is most days but not Saturdays. The register stays at the institute, so a parent who asks on the phone gets told what the teacher recalls. There is also a WhatsApp group where Ashish sometimes types out the names of children who have not submitted, which embarrasses some parents and is ignored by others. Nobody can say how many days in a row any child has actually kept up, because counting backwards through a register takes ten minutes per child.

The screens, in order

1. Institute sign in — Lets each institute Ashish sells to open its own students and nobody else's.
2. Batches — Shows the batches an institute runs so a teacher can pick the one standing in front of them.
3. Mark today — Gets forty children ticked or unticked and saved before the batch settles down.
4. Student history — Answers a parent's question about which days their child actually submitted.
5. Print cards — Turns the week's counts into a sheet of small cards a student can fold into a pocket.

What it keeps track of

• Institutes — name of the institute, town, who to ring, which batches they run, till when they have paid Ashish
• Batches — batch name, subject, which teacher, which days of the week it meets, who is in it
• Students — name, roll number, which batch, a parent's phone if given, days in a row right now, best run so far
• Daily marking — which student, which day, handed in or not, which teacher ticked it, at what time

The one decision that matters

The real decision is what a miss does to the number. One way, a single missed day sends the count back to zero, which is honest and makes the number worth something. The other way, it just stops growing for a day and carries on, which is kinder but means every child is on day forty by December and nobody looks at the card. Go with the reset. But print two numbers on the card, the current run and the best run the child has ever managed, so a broken streak leaves something behind instead of wiping the term out. A child with a best run of nineteen has proof of a good month even after a bad Monday.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out messages to parents entirely. No WhatsApp, no SMS, nothing that goes out of the building. The whole product lives or dies on whether a teacher can mark forty students in under a minute at seven in the morning, and adding parent messages brings in phone numbers, wrong numbers, angry replies and Ashish playing referee. Also leave out marks and grades. This counts submitted or not submitted, nothing more.

How you would know it worked

A student turns up at the door with a soft, folded card from last week and asks the teacher to write the new number on it before the batch starts. And the institute in Dharampeth that Ashish showed it to rings him asking for their own login.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a coaching institute in Nagpur and I want a small website I can also sell to three other institutes near me. Each institute signs in and sees only its own batches. A teacher opens a batch and gets the list of students for that day with everyone already marked as submitted, and just unticks the ones who did not bring homework, then saves. It should take under a minute for forty names on a phone. Keep a count of how many days in a row each student has handed in, send it back to zero when they miss a day, and also remember their best run ever. Once a week I want to print cards, eight to an A4 sheet, each one carrying the student's name, batch, the days in a row, the best run and a blank line for the teacher to sign. Also a page where I can look up one student and see which days they actually submitted, for when a parent rings.