New App Helps Collingswood Schoolchildren with Block Scheduling

For Collingswood parents and students having trouble keeping track of their days since the high school and middle school switched to block scheduling, a local software developer has released a downloadable application that can help.

Cherry Hill resident Alek Kosinski and his father, Ed, created the software under the name KosiDoss Apps when Alek's school district switched to block scheduling in 2012. 

Block-scheduled schools don't offer the same classes at the same times every day of the week. Instead, students rotate through a rolling sequence (or sometimes two) that Alek and his friends found confusing initially.

"The Block Scheduling app fixes all that by synchronizing the student’s individual schedule with the school’s academic calendar," reads the software description on the KosiDoss site, "thereby letting him/her know what classes are coming up today, tomorrow and throughout the year."

More than 100 kids and parents in Cherry Hill downloaded the software to their mobile devices in 2012, the Kosinkis said, and with relatives in Collingswood, they decided to roll out a version for students in the borough.

Superintendent Scott Oswald said that the Kosinskis approached him about providing the app to the school district. Collingswood paid nothing for access to the software.

"All we did was offer to put it on our web site and let kids know it is available if they want it," Oswald said in an e-mail to Patch.

Block scheduling has only been in effect for a couple weeks in the district, Oswald said, and so far the children "do not seem overly concerned about where they need to be next.

"Kids are amazingly resilient; they figure things out," he said. "There is a definite pattern to the classes, so once or twice through the cycle and they will be fine."

Although the app costs $0.99 to download, the developers won't really turn a profit for their investment, which they described as a labor of love.

After the iTunes and Google Play stores take their percentages, KosiDoss dedicates any revenues towards the annual license fees those stores charge developers who sell through them.

"The reward is that it benefits the students of our two school districts," Ed Kosinski said in an e-mail to Patch.

"I used to coach soccer, and my wife and I were involved in PTA...so this is just another way to help."