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?
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.
In January our city switched from a web portal to an app-only system.
Last fall I was working on getting a username+password access to the portal, since the students and teachers don't need BankID to log in. I was using my son's login to read the weekly newsletters.
At the time I warned our skolnämnden that I would not be getting a smartphone. They switched to app-only, making it impossible for me to get info or let the school know about absences or late arrive.
It took talking with the teachers, with fritids, and the principal to work out an email-based option.
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?