Student day planners appear to have made some big changes over the last decade but in reality most of that change has been in form over function. To be fair, there’s not a whole lot you can do with the 144 pages in a weekly student planner.
Still, the academic planner industry as whole may have missed the boat and taken the school planner market along with them. When the big education planner companies like Premier came along the graphic designers and marketing organizations went into action to make visually appealing daily student planners.
But that’s were we went wrong. Like medicine that tastes bad but is good for you, that beautiful student day planner with all the fun stuff on the page may have become just another layer of “noise” in a student’s world that is begging for “less” noise.
It’s one of the reasons that magazines like “Simple” have become so popular…we all know that we are overloaded…we have stimulus overload from the TV to the checkout line at the grocery store. Add in hectic work and personal lives and it’s easy to see why the current research is indicating it’s this crazy busy lifestyle is causing much of the ADD and ADHD symptoms we see in students and adults alike.
So is all that Flash really a help or is it just good old marketing 101? Remember the Generic isle in the grocery store about 20 years ago? The isle with the white and black labels? Who wouldn’t want full color, factoid packed, brain teased, busy student planner over a blander, simpler planner designed for the student of today (who happens to have a pretty high chance of being ADD/ADHD)?
Something to think about. More thoughts in my next post.
