Skylight’s Touchscreen Calendar Got my Whole Family on the Same Page
Skylight’s Touchscreen Calendar Got my Whole Family on the Same Page
Skylight 触控日历让我的全家人步调一致
Juggling schedules for my family of five is a constant source of stress. Every day I deal with calendars for three kids in three different schools, plus their extra-curricular activities and the constantly evolving work schedules of me and my husband. All the meal planning, grocery shopping, and general house upkeep seem never ending. 对于我这个五口之家来说，协调日程安排一直是个让人头疼的问题。我每天都要处理三个孩子在三所不同学校的日程，还要兼顾他们的课外活动，以及我和丈夫不断变化的工作时间表。所有的膳食规划、采购杂货和日常家务似乎永远也做不完。
For years, my husband and I shared a Google Calendar. It’s helpful, but not enough. Which is why I was excited when my family received a Skylight Calendar to try out. 多年来，我和丈夫一直共用一个 Google 日历。它很有用，但还不够。这就是为什么当我家收到一台 Skylight 日历进行试用时，我感到非常兴奋。
Two of my kids—now a teen and a tween, ages 15 and 12—are just starting to become better at managing their own schedules, and they’re old enough to engage with a connected, touchscreen calendar. Families with younger children may not get the same benefits from a device like this, which WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell learned when she tested the Skylight with her preschool-age kid. My kids are touchscreen natives, and my 12-year-old son took to it right away. 我的两个孩子——现在分别是 15 岁的青少年和 12 岁的准少年——刚开始学会更好地管理自己的日程，他们也长大了，足以使用这种联网的触控日历。正如《连线》杂志评论员 Nena Farrell 在用学龄前孩子测试 Skylight 时发现的那样，有更小孩子的家庭可能无法从这种设备中获得同样的便利。我的孩子们是“触屏原住民”，我 12 岁的儿子很快就上手了。
As soon as we got the Skylight, he unboxed and set up the 15-inch screen on a counter near the kitchen using the built-in stand. (It also comes in 10- and 27-inch sizes, and the two largest models can be mounted on the wall.) We all downloaded the Skylight app onto our phones and synced up to the main device. 我们一拿到 Skylight，他就拆开包装，利用内置支架将 15 英寸的屏幕安装在厨房附近的台面上。（它还有 10 英寸和 27 英寸版本，其中两款较大的型号可以挂在墙上。）我们都在手机上下载了 Skylight 应用程序，并与主设备进行了同步。
The calendar can connect to existing calendar apps from Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo. I am a Google user, and I helped my son import my Google Calendar to give us a base of scheduled activities. He set up a color-coded calendar for each kid in the family and moved their activities (from my already imported Google Calendar) to their individual colors. He also added a color for the household chores, like taking out the garbage and recycling, which are often up for grabs depending on who’s home. I loved this idea. It gave those duties their own category, even if I’m the one in my family still doing most of the heavy lifting. 该日历可以连接 Google、Apple、Microsoft 和 Yahoo 的现有日历应用。我是 Google 用户，我帮儿子导入了我的 Google 日历，作为我们日程安排的基础。他为家里的每个孩子设置了颜色编码的日历，并将他们的活动（从我已导入的 Google 日历中）分配到各自的颜色中。他还为家务活添加了一种颜色，比如倒垃圾和回收垃圾，这些活通常取决于谁在家谁就去做。我很喜欢这个主意。它让这些杂务有了自己的分类，尽管家里大部分繁重的工作依然是我在做。
One thing that surprised me was how excited my kids were to see everyone’s schedule. I didn’t realize that since they’ve gotten older they want to know what family activities I’ve planned so they can work around them. Instead of asking me if they can hang out with a friend on Thursday, they can easily check all of our schedules to see if it makes sense. I was glad to unload some of that responsibility, and they were happy to take it on. 让我惊讶的一点是，孩子们对查看每个人的日程安排感到非常兴奋。我没意识到，随着他们长大，他们想知道我计划了哪些家庭活动，以便他们能据此安排自己的时间。他们不再问我周四能不能和朋友出去玩，而是可以轻松查看我们所有人的日程，看看是否合适。我很高兴能卸下部分责任，而他们也很乐意承担起来。
While giving them access to the master calendar gives me some freedom, my Google Calendar also has personal notes, which are now visible to everyone in our family. For example, they can see the note I made to remind me to shop for my son’s birthday gift. I may need to rethink my note-taking habits as I adjust to using the Skylight app so that I can retain some privacy. 虽然让他们访问主日历给了我一些自由，但我的 Google 日历中也有个人笔记，现在家里每个人都能看到了。例如，他们能看到我提醒自己购买儿子生日礼物的备注。在适应使用 Skylight 应用的过程中，我可能需要重新考虑我的记笔记习惯，以便保留一些隐私。
One of the first things my 12-year-old said when he looked up Skylight’s tools was that we won’t forget our grocery list anymore, since there’s one in the app. For a long time, our shopping list had been a piece of paper stuck to the fridge, and relying on it often led to annoying mishaps, like me forgetting to buy bread and having to go back to the store, or bringing home way too many bananas. Now, we all have the Skylight app on our phones, and everyone can add items to the grocery list from anywhere. Anytime one of us (mostly me) is near a grocery store, we (I) can see the list and pick up whatever’s needed. 我 12 岁的儿子查看 Skylight 工具时说的第一件事就是，我们再也不会忘记购物清单了，因为应用里有一个。长期以来，我们的购物清单一直是一张贴在冰箱上的纸，依赖它经常导致令人烦恼的意外，比如我忘了买面包不得不折返商店，或者带回家太多的香蕉。现在，我们所有人的手机上都有 Skylight 应用，每个人都可以随时随地在购物清单上添加物品。每当我们中有人（主要是指我）靠近杂货店时，我们（我）就能看到清单并买回所需的东西。
Wall Flower
墙上的“花朵”
Some of the Skylight’s features are behind a paywall; a Plus subscription ($79 a year, or $8 a month) unlocks things like the platform’s meal-planning tool and its AI-powered assistant named Sidekick. I found great utility in the Sidekick assistant. After 15 years of entering the kids’ multiple school and activity calendars and dates by hand, I love that Sidekick can import events from a photo of a piece of paper, or from a forwarded email, and add the activities directly to my calendar. Scanning a paper schedule doesn’t generate a perfectly accurate calendar event (neither does forwarding an email), but it gives me a starting point and cuts down on the effort it takes to enter everything manually. Skylight 的一些功能需要付费；Plus 订阅（每年 79 美元或每月 8 美元）可以解锁平台上的膳食规划工具及其名为 Sidekick 的人工智能助手。我发现 Sidekick 助手非常实用。在手动输入孩子们繁多的学校和活动日程长达 15 年后，我非常喜欢 Sidekick 可以通过纸质照片或转发的电子邮件导入事件，并直接将活动添加到我的日历中。扫描纸质日程表并不能生成完全准确的日历事件（转发电子邮件也是如此），但它给了我一个起点，减少了手动输入所有内容的工作量。
With Sidekick, my family can also scan printed recipes with the phone’s camera and add them to a database, where they can then tap the recipe title to add the dish to our weekly calendar. When I’m in the kitchen, the recipe is then easy to access on the 15-inch screen or in the Skylight app. 有了 Sidekick，我的家人还可以用手机摄像头扫描打印的食谱并将其添加到数据库中，然后点击食谱标题将菜肴添加到我们的每周日历中。当我在厨房时，可以轻松地在 15 英寸屏幕或 Skylight 应用上查看食谱。
Initially, my 12-year-old had fun scrolling through our family’s recipe book—a collection of physical pages mostly made up of recipes we’ve found online and printed—then scanning favorites into Skylight and adding the recipes he wanted me to make to the weekly calendar. Mostly, it’s easier to just assign a meal to a day of the week without a recipe. For example, I don’t follow a recipe when I make a stir-fry (I just make it up each time) but it’s a meal that is consistently on the menu each week. 起初，我 12 岁的儿子很喜欢翻阅我们的家庭食谱——那是一叠由我们从网上找到并打印出来的食谱组成的纸质合集——然后把喜欢的食谱扫描进 Skylight，并把他想让我做的菜添加到每周日历中。通常，直接给一周中的某一天分配一顿饭而不使用食谱会更简单。例如，我做炒菜时从不看食谱（每次都是随心所欲），但它却是每周菜单上的常客。
I also got excited when, after I assigned a recipe to a day of the week, the app asked if I wanted to add its ingredients to my grocery list. It worked well when I wanted to make kale chips because that recipe has only a few ingredients. But it was kind of annoying when I wanted to make minestrone soup; it added every little ingredient, including a dash of salt. 当我在一周中的某一天分配了食谱后，应用询问我是否要将其配料添加到购物清单中，这让我感到很兴奋。当我做羽衣甘蓝脆片时，这个功能效果很好，因为那个食谱只有几种配料。但当我做蔬菜汤时，它就有点烦人了；它把每一种细小的配料都加了进去，甚至包括一小撮盐。
One thing that frustrates me is that the calendar doesn’t have a battery, so I can’t sit on the couch and work on the Skylight’s 15-inch screen unless I’m near an outlet and have the device plugged in. I end up making changes on the mobile app more frequently than on Skylight’s touchscreen. My husband uses the screen to review activities and tasks on our to-do list, but he uses his phone to enter new information. And my kids mostly use the app on their phones rather than on the 15-inch touchscreen. 让我感到沮丧的一点是，这个日历没有电池，所以我不能坐在沙发上操作 Skylight 的 15 英寸屏幕，除非我靠近插座并插上电源。最终，我更多是在手机应用上进行修改，而不是在 Skylight 的触控屏上。我丈夫会用屏幕查看待办事项列表上的活动和任务，但他会用手机输入新信息。而我的孩子们大多也是在手机应用上操作，而不是使用那个 15 英寸的触控屏。
My husband discovered that Skylight has a phone widget (available on iOS). 我丈夫发现 Skylight 有一个手机小组件（适用于 iOS）。