Finding an education suited to highly gifted children can be difficult for families. Davidson Academy, the only U.S. public school established specifically for this group, encourages independent, critical thinking. But independence also requires practical support: a couple of years before this account, administrators at its online campus noticed that inconsistent homework routines were leaving students unsure about assignments and deadlines.
Teachers assigned work in different ways, while students tracked it across assorted planners. Dr. Stacy Hawthorne, director of online programs, wanted to ensure that students were assessed on their understanding—not penalized because they had missed an instruction. The school decided to give every student a task manager, allowing them to spend less effort tracking homework and more on completing it.
After considering options including Wunderlist and its successor, Microsoft To Do, Davidson chose Todoist. Students have since found homework and group projects easier to organize, and teachers report fewer overlooked assignments.
Supporting independence with a consistent system
Traditional public schools must meet the needs of most students, which can leave those with exceptionally high intelligence scores underserved. Founder Bob Davidson believed that the opportunity to learn at school should extend to the nation’s brightest students, too.
Davidson opened on the University of Nevada, Reno campus in 2006. Attendance is tuition-free for students from within the state, and students can take university courses. Families relocated to Reno from across the U.S. to attend. Continued interest from families elsewhere in the country and in Canada led to an online campus in 2017. At the time of this account, it served 145 students: 80 full-time and 65 partially enrolled through the Davidson Institutes Explore courses.
Applicants must score in the 99.9th percentile on accepted intelligence or achievement tests. The school also considers academic performance and demonstrated social and emotional maturity.
Students and staff develop personalized learning plans that combine individual interests with graduation requirements. Course placement follows ability rather than age or conventional grade level, and the curriculum emphasizes advanced critical thinking. Alongside math, science, English, history, and world languages, offerings include Asian Studies, Advanced Rhetoric, and Machine Learning/AI.
Classes have no more than 15 students and center on discussion and active problem-solving. Assignments range from essays and hands-on activities to student-centered and student-designed projects. Stacy describes an environment that combines academic challenge with care, giving profoundly gifted young people room to be themselves.
Technology supports that approach. Online classes use Zoom, every student receives an Office 365 subscription, and in 2018 the school began providing telepresence robots that remote students could drive to Reno-campus classes they could not attend in person.
Why the school chose Todoist
As enrollment grew and students took five or more classes, differing assignment schedules and calendars made online learning harder to navigate. Stacy and her colleagues standardized the process: teachers would publish the following week’s work on Blackboard at the same time every Friday, then give students time to enter it in their planners. The aim was to help children plan their week while reducing unnecessary screen time.
A common planner would let students and parents follow assignments more easily. It also needed to support group collaboration and allow teachers to send tasks directly to students who needed extra organizational help.
Microsoft To Do was included with the school’s Office 365 subscriptions, but Davidson chose Todoist because its design better met those needs. Stacy regarded ease of adoption and usability as more important than choosing the available free option.
For an online school without a shared building, she sees clear, frequent communication as essential. Todoist contributes by making responsibilities visible to everyone involved.
How students organize their work
From Friday assignments to completed homework
Davidson follows a consistent weekly procedure:
By 2 p.m. Pacific Time every Friday, teachers publish the next week’s assignments on Blackboard.
Students enter those assignments in Todoist.
At 3 p.m., students can attend “Keep Your Head in the Game,” where counselors help them fill out Todoist and plan the coming week. Guidance includes dividing larger assignments into smaller tasks—for example, setting earlier deadlines for individual paragraphs of a paper due the following Friday.
Throughout the week, students and parents consult Todoist to monitor upcoming deadlines and stay on track.
Students submit finished assignments through Blackboard. After an email confirms receipt, they mark the corresponding Todoist task complete.
Coordinating group projects and clubs
Group work asks students with different learning styles to meet shared milestones and deadlines. In Todoist, Davidson students can share projects, assign tasks, discuss the work, and follow the same schedule. A common record of responsibilities is especially useful when group members never share a physical location.
Some students also organize clubs in Todoist. Davidson’s clubs include social activism, an online newspaper, chess, slam poetry, yearbook, and student council.
Providing extra help with assignments
The goal is for students to manage their own work, but those who need more support can involve teachers and counselors. Through shared projects, staff can add assignments directly to a student’s Todoist and receive notifications when tasks are marked complete.
Davidson reports substantially fewer misunderstandings about deadlines since adopting the app. According to Stacy, counselors say students find it easier to manage tasks and recognize when their work is finished.
How teachers and staff collaborate
Initially introduced for students, Todoist has also become a coordination tool for teachers and support staff handling the many projects involved in running an online school.
When Stacy oversaw publishing the school’s course descriptions online, she assigned each description to the relevant teacher in Todoist. She found that having teachers submit their descriptions and complete their tasks was easier than chasing email responses while maintaining a separate master checklist.
School leaders also use Todoist for back-to-school preparations. Summer work includes building master and individual student schedules, planning hardware and software projects and upgrades, training new staff, and organizing events. These efforts often span several people and departments. Stacy says Todoist clarifies responsibility, keeps teams on track, and supports communication and trust.
A shared birthday project serves a different but important purpose. Staff record birthdays for everyone in the online school as annually recurring tasks due on each person’s birth date. This helps ensure someone sends a birthday announcement.
Although the technology manager handles most school technology accounts, Stacy has continued managing Todoist herself because, she says, it takes so little time. She views its adoption as part of Davidson’s ongoing effort to improve students’ experience and help them manage their responsibilities.
