My cool Favorite Sticky notes tools:

The reason I fell in love with scrumblr, is that it takes two seconds to get going with. You don’t need to register, sign up or log in. You just get started.

To check it out, just click here. You create a new board by simply using a unique URL - like http://srumblr.ca/your_team_name_your_board_name.

Now this tool may be lacking in functionality for more elaborate stuff, but it’s an excellent way to get you started.

Lino is an amazing online tool that serves as a personal white board!

It’s seriously cool, with endless options.

First, I really appreciate the fact that by creating a personal board I can customize it to reflect my entire “world” of doings and interests. For example, I can arrange my career interests, customer related issues, personal tasks and my entire area of interest, and have them laid out right in front of me.

Second, I can create several boards, each with a different scope of interests. For example, one board will be for managing my personal tasks, and another board for my customers.

Being able to visualize the whole, while also scoping over a specific issue is a very powerful tool for getting things done.

Third, I just love the digital sticky notes option.

Lino is online, so I can, of course, access it from anywhere and design my own set of boards. It’s simple to use, colorful, has tons of options, video tutorials and a friendly introduction.

Features include adding tasks or pictures, due dates, tasks icons, tasks priority, pinning tasks, and more!

And of course, there’s a mobile app as well, for both iPhone AND Android users!

I love it!

Here’s another post, showing you how people use Lino as an amazing classroom tool.

 

One Favorite cool free Sticky notes tool- scrumblr

The reason I fell in love with scrumblr, is that it takes two seconds to get going with. You don’t need to register, sign up or log in. You just get started. 

To check it out, just click here. You create a new board by simply using a unique URL - like http://srumblr.ca/your_team_name_your_board_name.

Now this tool may be lacking in functionality for more elaborate stuff, but it’s an excellent way to get you started.

The Feeling of ownership and quality time with our kids .

Agile@Home :

How many times have you told your kids to stop strewing stuff all over the living room? And how many times have you wondered, when would you be able to stop repeating yourself?

As you can imagine, it happened to me too.

Now, for a pop quiz. How many of you have taken over these tasks for your kids? You might get angry with them from time to time, but YOU are the one tidying the room, getting their bags ready for the next day - you are the task owners.

All of you? Yeah, I know the feeling.

But how did it happen?

First, lets all agree that we want our kids to own their tasks. Second, lets agree that we want to stop nagging them. Third, lets agree that the kids want to stop being nagged too. Now that we’ve agreed on all that, lets continue.

After all, i believe, we all want quality time with our kids, meaning we all need to free our valuable time with our kids to more important stuff than the same old nagging over and over again.

So how do we do this with Agile? It’s simple, really. By the way, some teachers have already used this method in their classroom to get the kids to perform better and own their tasks.

We take Kanban as a tool and Agile as a mindset and we manage to reduce the nagging and increase ownership. Doing that, we free up valuable time for a healthy family dialog.

I believe that Feeling of ownership means that you are the one that care about this task. You do it because YOU think it is important and not because someone commanded you to do it.

So how do we empower our kids, how do we help them become owners of the task?

What benefits are we looking for?

1.       How to get to the stage where the child does his task on his own (answers our needs as parents).

2.       How to make sure it's not a one time thing.

3.       How to make the child feel in control.

4.       What values should we pass on, and what does the child gain by completing his tasks (involvement, parental communication, attention).

We’ve written about real life examples before, but here’s a short list to achieve our goals:

A : Visualize the family chores.

1. Introduce Scrum to your kids the fun way. Use colors, sticky notes and a board, and show them its fun. Fun helps us connect better to a concept. Once we are emotionally connected we will be more cooperative.
   
   
2. Build the task board together: Sit down with your kids to build a task board as a family. Let them be part of it. Don’t build it for them. When we do something ourselves, we relate to it better and we start to develop that sense of ownership toward it. Having the children build the board is also easier for us as parents. I mean, what can they possibly get wrong? And don’t forget, this way they have our undivided attention.  So, just Draw the three columns, and let them do the rest.
   
   
3. Everybody puts a task on the board - even Mummy and Daddy. Not too many, one or two each.  Let them pick their tasks by themselves. ‘Helping’ them pick tasks just makes those tasks yours again.

B : Initiate the first step of a healthy family dialog

4. Suggested that it would be really fun to meet every evening and talk about the tasks, and move them on the board according to their progress.
5. Meet every evening and talk about the tasks. Let the kids move the tasks around the board themselves.
6. From time to time , suggest adding more tasks.

Over time, your kids will take ownership over their tasks. They get to the board from time to time, and especially on times agreed they need to do their chores and move the tasks from one column on the board to another.

It works in so many families these days, and its so simple.

Want to learn more?

And … don’t forget to have fun.

A mother creative solution for helping her girls with their homework

Agile@Home :

“ I do believe in Kanban, it did help my daughter in school big time!

" 2 years ago, she used to bring her homework, put her agenda on her desk and start crying :) she didn’t know where and how to start. At school, they give them lot of tasks to perform every Thursday. They write them in their agenda, and they have to perform all of them by the next Friday (they have one week).

Schools and teachers expects kids to manage their tasks by their own, but in reality,  I see all parents around me managing the homework tasks for their kids. Some parents and kids are great working with the traditional agenda, but for my daughter, it was a big a challenge.  One day she forgets her agenda at school, the other day she starts multiple tasks same day, another time she forgets that she didn’t finish a task etc.

The agenda was not working for her, I tried to help her with it, but couldn’t, it was simply not for her! I had to find  another way, a better way. I wanted a solution that will help her structure her homework tasks by her own, without me asking, did you start your task, did you finish it, how many tasks left etc…

Both my husband and I are software engineers, my husband is a scrum master, he knew about agile mythologies and Kanban. My husband suggested to use Kanban as an alternative for her task management, because he knew that she was very visual, and Kanban will be perfect for her.  I loved the idea; we started using Kanban as a physical board with stickers.

 It was great for the last 2 years, until my other daughter needed the same thing. They didn’t want to share the physical board J  Instead of having 2 separate boards (eventually I will have 3 because I have a son who is in Grade 1 and will certainly use Kanban as well), I wanted to build something reusable, fun, easy and made specifically for young kids, so as an agile developer, decided to make a fun app for my kids. Android was the first step because tablets are less expensive and we could have one tablet for each of our 3 kids :) 

 

I started developing the app , kids enjoyed the experience, because they participated, they asked for features (task becomes red when it is due next day,  earn points when they finish a task etc…), they have chosen colors, pictures etc… They have been using it since March 2012, and they just love it! Even my 6 years old son is using it for his homework which I didn’t expect, thought he was too young. I realized that kids nowadays are born in a modern era, with Ipads, tablets, smartphones etc. They naturally love using devices, so why don’t get even my son a tablet for his homework and teach him managing as well!  He loves earning points and practicing maths on   KanPlan .

It’s not just the tablet and the board, it’s the way they own their task that makes this whole deal worth a try. The Kanban is a minded approach, it teaches them visualize what they need to do , moving tasks around the board , making decision  and getting things done.

The app, was designed for them, it had to be easy and fun. It holds a neat look and feel and an easy way for the kids to add tasks drag them around the board and see the completion. I also added predefined tasks, that are quick to add and run on   KanPlan . Something like practicing times table. Instead of my daughter entering manually a task for practicing her times table, she browses a selection of tasks (KanQuiz), picks the one she wants, and running it directly in KanPlan. It avoids me of writing some multiplications on paper to practice. It is integrated, and gives her a report at the end how fast she was and her score.  I see KanQuiz as reusable tasks, that can be done several times by one kid, and are there for my next kid once they reach the KanQuiz grade level.   I am also adding KanWord to the selection (tablet will speek to kids), to practice spelling and grammar soon. 

Anyway, my kids are 100% self-managed now, I am so proud of them, they come at home after school, they go directly to their desk where their tablets are, and enter their tasks and manage their work. My daughter went from being an average student who was unable to focus, was lost in her tasks to do, to an efficient and  very organized student, now she always finishes a task before starting a new one and never forget a task to do. She was able to manage her tasks to practice exams for entering  private schools. She did that using   KanPlan by her own.  She applied for 4 private schools, we were hoping to get 1, and she succeeded all of them! We were so proud of her!

My daughters wish to bring their tablet  at school and avoid the “agenda” step. Instead of writing their tasks in the agenda and enter them back again in KanPlan once at home, why not entering them directly to KanPlan in the class?  Schools are too strict right now, they don’t want electronics in their classes. I am positive that it will change one day.  I just hope that they will allow students to use different solutions for their task management, because the traditional agenda is not a solution that fits all students.  I definitely see KanPlan as a solution for teachers/tutors who want to teach kids how to manage their tasks.  I have few comments from some teachers who are waiting for the admin tool (we are working on it) that allows them to create KanTasks and assign them to their students. Students will automatically see their tasks in the TODO list!  I would love to talk to more teachers/tutors to get more comments about how we can use KanPlan in a class environment that fits and embrace how teachers/tutors work.

My challenge now is to continue improving   KanPlan and keep it interesting and fun for all kids. Don’t hesitate to contact me for any comment, any feature request or change request !

Houda Hamdane the owner and developer of  KanPlan .

 For more about KanPlan

More about kid’s empowerment in Kanban

KanPlan - A neat Homemade Kanban way to do your homework

Agile@Home :

Sometimes all I need to do is download a new app for my android tablets, and watch the kids use it. In this case - I got KanPlan, and in two minutes my children were all over the iPad, adding their homework tasks, and getting things done.

KanPlan was developed by Houda Hamdane as a solution for parents who want to organize homework time for their kids, while making it fun for everyone. KanPlan, as you probably understand from the name, uses Kanban to make this happen, and you know I believe Kanban to be one of the best tools in dealing with children and family tasks.

I first heard about KanPlan when commented on my LinkedIn post. Obviously, we both share the same interest in Kanban and believe in the home made /self made Kanban way to get things done.

Now, as you already know, I love simple. And KanPlan is simple.

You can add all sorts of tasks of course, not just homework. You can drag and drop your tasks according to their relevant status, and it is just full of colour.

They’ve even got a game - the KanQuiz - that you can solve to get points.

It just makes sense, when you think about it. Children today are naturally drawn to smart devices - smartphones, tablets, touch screens. Apps are their natural environment. So why not take advantage of that fact, and help them visualize their task with tools they are familiar with? Not only that, but pretty soon tablets will start replacing school books - so you are also preparing them for the not-too-distant future. The value of Kanban to the family and children go without saying (just take a look around the blog). KanPlan gives us a neat Kanban app for the kids, and has potential to be even bigger.

So go on - check it out. You’ll be amazed at how easy KanPlan is to pick up and use. 

http://www.screenr.com/Vkg8

Other than this video, there’s also a step by step tutorial of course.

You can get the KanPlan version for free from here: KanPlan has no ads in it (after all this is an application for kids)

http://www.kanplan.net/home.html

http://www.screenr.com/RVh8