[hkwerf]

I have to install an app to communicate with my child's state-sponsored daycare. I'll have to install an app to communicate with the teachers at his future school. Is this still fine?

It'd be one thing, if it were just apps. But all of these apps are essentially just containers for some web application.

Do you get access to the web application without the app? No.

So what's the point of the apps? So they can send you notifications and annoy you with irrelevant updates concerning other groups at the same daycare all day long, because they don't care to filter?

[froglets]

Once they get into school you’ll need to use separate apps to communicate with their teachers, pay for fee/lunches, etc.

The communication apps are out of control since the teachers seem to have choice in what is required and so changes every year.

My middle schooler needs 3 different apps (and a Chromebook) to check/hand in homework and parents need 2 to receive communication from the teachers.

[dalke]

Here in Sweden, it took me about 5 months but I was able to get the school to send me info by email. They switched to an app-only system, and I have no smartphone.

Setting aside any issues related to privacy or US corporate control over my life, I'm one of the people who doesn't use a smartphone because the temptation to be online, at the drop of the hat, is too much to resist.

I compare it to being like someone who needs to lose weight, so keeps all chocolate out of the house, while everyone seems to expect me to have a luscious bar of high quality chocolate with me all the time, just sitting there, begging me to eat it.

There is an ongoing debate about smartphones at school, and the addiction and distraction they can be for kids. I think my strongest argument is that the addiction and distraction don't simply disappear for adults, and there was no way they were going to force me to get a smartphone.

I don't think that would work for those with a smartphone, but it's a crack keeping an alternative open.

[tuna74]

I live in Sweden with two kids in school and can do everything through the web (except BankId authentication of course).