https://joanurevbu.com/writing.html Essays by Joan Urevbu (Joan Osunde) on education technology, low-bandwidth design, school operations, and institutional trust. en admin@upsshub.com (Joan Urevbu) admin@upsshub.com (Joan Urevbu) Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://joanurevbu.com/favicon.ico https://joanurevbu.com/writing.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/what-a-fee-reminder-teaches-about-respect.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/what-a-fee-reminder-teaches-about-respect.html Joan Urevbu Mon, 16 Jun 2026 10:00:00 GMT A school fee reminder is a small message about money — and one of the most delicate things software sends on a school's behalf. Tone is infrastructure. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/software-people-dont-have-time-to-learn.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/software-people-dont-have-time-to-learn.html Joan Urevbu Mon, 16 Jun 2026 09:30:00 GMT In a school, nobody has a spare hour for your onboarding. Software for busy institutions has to be learnable in the gaps between everything else. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/building-software-across-two-time-zones.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/building-software-across-two-time-zones.html Joan Urevbu Sun, 14 Jun 2026 11:00:00 GMT Working between Benin City and Porto Alegre changed how I think about reliability, latency, and what 'always on' really means. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/what-a-substitute-teacher-needs-by-8am.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/what-a-substitute-teacher-needs-by-8am.html Joan Urevbu Sun, 14 Jun 2026 10:30:00 GMT Cover is the stress test of school operations. If your systems can get a substitute into the right room with the right plan by 8 a.m., they work. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/the-register-is-a-promise.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/the-register-is-a-promise.html Joan Urevbu Sun, 14 Jun 2026 10:00:00 GMT An attendance register looks like a list of names. It is really a promise about who is safe, who is missing, and who knows. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/why-schools-still-run-on-spreadsheets.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/why-schools-still-run-on-spreadsheets.html Joan Urevbu Sun, 14 Jun 2026 09:30:00 GMT The spreadsheet is the most successful school-management system ever built. Any software that hopes to replace it has to understand why it won. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/what-an-sms-actually-costs.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/what-an-sms-actually-costs.html Joan Urevbu Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT The real economics of reaching thousands of parents by SMS — why the cheapest channel is also the most demanding to do well. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/the-school-gate-is-a-systems-problem.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/the-school-gate-is-a-systems-problem.html Joan Urevbu Sat, 13 Jun 2026 11:30:00 GMT The last hundred meters of the school day — pickup, dismissal, and who collects which child — is a safety and logistics problem worth taking seriously. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/a-school-talks-to-parents-one-message-at-a-time.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/a-school-talks-to-parents-one-message-at-a-time.html Joan Urevbu Sat, 13 Jun 2026 11:00:00 GMT On institutional communication, timing, and the unglamorous infrastructure of care that decides whether a parent trusts a school. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/designing-for-the-last-bar-of-signal.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/designing-for-the-last-bar-of-signal.html Joan Urevbu Sat, 13 Jun 2026 10:30:00 GMT Designing software for places where data is expensive and connectivity comes and goes — building for the weakest connection, not the strongest. https://joanurevbu.com/writing/the-best-school-software-is-invisible.html https://joanurevbu.com/writing/the-best-school-software-is-invisible.html Joan Urevbu Sat, 13 Jun 2026 10:00:00 GMT On why the measure of school software is the silence when nothing goes wrong — correctness, reliability, and institutional trust.