Maybe you’ve noticed a thing or two about ONESCHOOL PSU on your recommended Facebook pages or saw that some of your friends are following that blue orb that bears a similar resemblance to the aforementioned social networking sites. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you are not alone. Before writing this post, none of us had either.

The @oneschool Twitter page has about 1,400 followers, which is roughly 3% of the student population here at Penn State, but followers also include those from Berkeley and USC, who also have the ONESCHOOL app for their university. This could be another fly-by-night media venture or it could be the next legitimate great technology to grace our campus since ANGEL. Let’s just hope the numbers on their networking sites don’t have the same digits in their users count.

Instead of having one person review the app, here are what three of our staff members had to say about the app after some trial and error:

Evan Ponter: The Big Guy

—ONESCHOOL was supposed to join together all that is needed for a Penn State student in one place. However, it leaves a lot to be desired. The ‘Bus Tracker’ has no advantage over the CATA app that is already on the smartphones of most students. There isn’t even a time schedule for irregular buses. The map is nothing more than latitude perpetually frozen on campus. The ‘Courses’ tab does nothing but show you if a class has an opening or not. Wow, thanks. You can’t even add or drop it from ONESCHOOL, so who cares?

‘Groups’ is similarly disappointing with just a list that can be easily accessed from the Student Activities website and a list on restaurant under the ‘Food’ function is nothing without the ability to actually order the food.  The only thing that has potential is the ‘Directory’ and ‘Wall’ functions. This integration of some form of social media has promise. However, they still missed the mark of what I had expected. Back to the drawing board, guys. This is an incomplete app.

Tyler Hoy: The Nice Guy

—The ONESCHOOL application encompasses so many things that students use on a daily basis in one spot. No other app on the market has made an attempt to provide this much convenience for college students; it’s truly unique to its kind. 

The app is still in its infancy with room to grow, but once it fully develops, the sky is the limit. When it becomes readily available at more college campuses, it could make other apps and websites obsolete.

Marcus Correll: The Tiebreaker

—I wanted to walk into this open-minded and try to give this app a shot, I really did.  I was already turned off by the fact of how difficult it was to actually find the app’s website; I’ve seen all the bullshit followers it’s attracting and honestly thought it would be a little more promoted and show up on search engines better. First and foremost, anyone that doesn’t even plan on using this app should know that your student information under ‘Directory’ is now in the palm of all your fellow students’ hands (my cell phone was listed—WTF?). 

The map is useless, I’d rather wander aimlessly if the GPS on my phone wasn’t providing the same service. ‘Bus Tracker’ is a joke; way to steal the one good thing CATA had going for them. The ‘Food’ tab could be potentially useful if you had no idea where anything was in this town, but it doesn’t order me any Wings Over, so it’s obviously not that dedicated to student food needs.

It’s cool that the ‘News’ tab links to Onward State as one of its sources, but if it’s honestly supposed to share the whole college market, then the Collegian needs to be a similar contributor. Out of all the terrible things on this app, I did enjoy the ability to look up class information, but call me when you can replace eLion with this app.  All the combined features make this seem like the ideal app, but in reality it’s a few home button clicks away on your iPhone and you already have everything this app is supposed to give you.

Well, there you have it. Two out of three reviewers were highly disappointed with this application and hope that the creators take a hard update for version 2.0. Give it a try yourself and tell us if you share any of the similar gripes or praise that our reviewers encountered.

Update: An editorial correction has been made on the review of the ‘News’ tab involving the exclusion of the PSU Live tab on the ONESCHOOL app.