How to Use Trello for High School

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I've helped my kids set up Trello to organize their high school assignments and school work.

I've been testing out 2 organization systems in parallel for my grad school work -- Trello and Todoist.  They are both great applications, but different.  Based on their preferences, one of my high schoolers is using Trello and the other is using Todoist.  In this video, I'll share how you can set Trello up to help you organize your high school assignments and work.

I have a massive pet peeve about high school and the way assignments are given.  In middle school, assignments were given out day by day, but there was quite a bit of hand holding and some leeway to make sure students got things done.  In college, professors are required to give their students a syllabus at the beginning of the semester with the entire four months already entirely planned out week by week.  High school, by contrast, is like this black hole where they stop holding your hand, but each teacher throws assignments at you willy nilly with absolutely no pre-planning.  And they wonder why teenagers don't have great executive functioning skills?  I really think high school teachers should be required to plan out at least one month in advance -- knowing of course that things may shift due to snow days or other extenuating circumstances.  And yes, I know that some teachers do this -- but a great many do not and I think the kids really suffer.  There's just no reason that high school should be more confusing and harder to manage than college, but that's the situation we have.

I'm in graduate school and have used Trello for organizing.  I have a video where I walk through this process.  If your high school functions more like a college in that your teachers have thoroughly planned out months of assignments in advance, you may want to view that video instead.  I'm assuming for the purposes of this set up that your teachers may have a couple of big projects or papers planned with due dates, but that the other assignments come at you on a weekly or daily basis.  

Okay -- if you are brand new to Trello, I recommend that you look for and watch my overview video to get a sense of what Trello is and how it differs from other organizational systems.  After that, sign up for a free account and create a board called -- whatever you want.  If you are a high school student, I'm assuming this will be your main organizational system for everything -- since school work is the bulk of your responsibilities.  So, in that case, I might call it Lara's Board or Lara's Tasks.  Okay, now that you have your board ready, let's start adding some lists.  The first list is

• General Info - this is a notes list.  You are going to keep basic information here.  I might put in a card for your class schedule and a card with the school year calendar.  Maybe a card with some contact info for your school counselor and your academic coach.  You can also put in some notes about extracurricular activities here.  This is just a place where you are storing general information.  Next, make a list called
• Class info - Once you have created this list, you will make a card for each class on your schedule.  Each class card will have information that you may need for the class.  For example, teacher contact info, names and links to textbooks, links to online class rooms or resources.  I would also attach the class syllabus if you have one.  Finally, for each class, I would choose a label and color.  Trello has 6 default labels and colors.  You can start with those or create your own.  You will be using these labels to color-code assignments.  I would also name them using this edit button.  For example, let's say AP World is going to be green -- go ahead and put in the text.  Now from now on, you can apply this label using the keyboard shortcut.  Since it is in the first label position, when you are hovering over a card in the browser version of Trello, you can toggle the label on and off by hitting the number 1 key.  So, you should have one card per class with a different color label for each.  The next list is
• Big Projects - In this list, you will keep a card for each project or paper from your classes.  Generally, you'll hear about these reasonably far in advance.  For example, let's stick with AP World.  Let's say we have a big research paper due at the end of October.  So, I'd create a card, enter a due date for it, and apply the AP World label.  What else do I want to put in this card?  Anything that I might know about this project -- instructions, links to resources, other due dates.  Plus, you can start planning out your tasks for this project by putting in a checklist and mapping out the beginning tasks to get started.  Before we go on, let me just point to a couple of other great ways to customize your cards:
• Cover - first of all, you can add a cover to your card.  Let's say your research project is on Ancient Greek Architecture.  Well, you can search for or upload a photo of the Parthenon.  Once you add it, that card will be much bigger and will definitely pop.  In addition, if you are using Trello on your phone, I use 
• Emojis - to make cards or lists more visually understandable or just plain cuter.  You can just insert them using the emoji keyboard into Card or List titles.  It makes things a little more fun.  Okay, so that's three lists.  Next I have my action lists starting with
• Later, then
• This Week,
• Today, and
• Done

So, this is how this works.  As you receive assignments during the day, you enter them as cards into your Today list.  Make sure you apply the right label so that you have those tasks color coded by class.  Then when you sit down to do your school work for the day, the very first thing you do is organize your lists. First determine which tasks you need to do today.  You can drag and drop them to the top of your Today list in the order you want to do them. The tasks you will not do today need to be moved to This Week — meaning you intend to do them within the next 7 days OR to the Later list — meaning the timeline for that task is beyond the next week.  Do a quick read through of all of the tasks on both of these lists to determine whether you need to move them to another list.  In other words, maybe you have some things on your This Week list that you put on a couple of days ago, that now need to be done today.  Or you have some on the later list that need to be pulled up to This Week.  

Okay — once you have organized your tasks — you can get started. You can drag and drop your tasks into the order that you want to complete them. For time management, I also will mark tasks with the time I want to start them or how long I think it will take.  Once I’ve completed a task, drag it over to the Done list.  I keep my Done list to the far left which is against Trello and kanban board orthodoxy, but hey — I’m a rebel. 

Four other things quickly: projects, personal tasks, daily tasks, and calendar.  

• Projects - so, you have some big projects or papers for some of your classes in that list, right?  What you need to do is break them into smaller tasks to get started on them.  Like this: research a topic, create an outline, write first draft, etc.  You can put each of these tasks into the Project card as a checklist.  Then, when you are ready to work on the project, convert these checklist items to individual cards, so that you can move them to your action lists to work through them one at a time. 
• Personal tasks - you can use Trello for all of your tasks, not just school related ones. I would suggest using a different label or labels for personal stuff.
• Daily tasks - There are certain chores you do everyday: like walk the dog or unload the dishwasher.  Trello isn’t great at these repeatable tasks, but you can make them work with some effort on your part.  Say, every day you want to do 4 things.   I would keep them at the top of the This Week list. Then when you are doing your organizing for the day, you drag these over to the Today list and sort them into your other tasks in the order you want to complete them.  Figure out a way to make them look different (with an emoji, label or cover photo), because when you are finished doing that chore, you will drag it back over to the This Week list rather than to the Done list.  As I said, not great, but it is one way to handle repeating tasks! And finally,
• Calendar - if you turn on the Calendar power up, you can see all of the cards that you have assigned due dates to in Monthly calendar format. It’s useful for big projects, upcoming tests, and papers.

And that’s it!  Let me know what you think. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!