History
I founded Hellmansoft in 2007, after spending a year or so working on Planbook and teaching Physics and Chemistry in at Elmira High School in the Southern Willamette Valley (Oregon). I'd been teaching for four years when I decided to tackle my frustration with writing lesson plans repetitively (for myself, administrators, the Special Education department and my students/parents). After trying to coerce Microsoft Excel to do my lesson plans, and maintaining my own set of web pages for my classes, during the summer of 2007 I decided to brush off my programming skills and see if I could write a specialized application to replace the mish-mash of technology I was using in my classroom. Two months later, I had a simple prototype that worked by my needs (but not for many others'). I spent many late nights the next year adding features, fixing bugs and creating a far more robust program. In the summer of 2008 I began selling Planbook and have been working ever since to improve the application. I soon added a Windows version of Planbook and six months or so after the release of the iPad, I introduced an iPad version of Planbook. I moved out of Oregon in 2011 and simultaneously began working on Planbook full time. I've been working full-time (and then some) on Hellmansoft ever since.
Assigner
In the winter of 2012 I sat down to write a simplified application to let teachers post homework assignments (and handouts) on the web. I released Assigner in the spring of 2012 (for Mac and iOS) and while the software is currently still in version 1.0, it's being used by a number of educators and I've got a number of ideas to enhance the program.
The Future
I have a number of ideas for other applications to help educators do their jobs better and more efficiently. Teaching gets more and more difficult each year, and I'm very proud to create tools that make that job a little easier. Please check back for the latest updates and get in touch if you have any ideas or questions about me or my software. Talking to educators from all parts of the world is a wonderful perk of my job.
Jeff Hellman