The first Loeks have gone out the door

Last year our daughter wondered why her father needed her Somtoday login for the rickety e-ink screen on the kitchen table. This week the first Loeks went out the door.

At that same kitchen table I sat taping boxes shut and sticking on PostNL labels. After the pilot at Barlaeus Gymnasium, the first Loeks now sit on a desk at home.

The problem was very familiar

Her school has no phones in class. Deliberately analogue teaching. And yet every morning she picked up her phone, to see whether the first lesson was cancelled. Because the timetable lives in Somtoday, and Somtoday opens on a phone.

That repeated every afternoon, because the homework lives in Somtoday too.

That is how the phone became a school supply. You pick it up for the timetable or the homework, and the rest of the phone comes with it. It makes it much harder for parents to delay a first phone, or to limit how it is used. Just as we as adults like to say "yes but I need it for work".

What does Loek do

Together with fellow parent Jochem Baud I built Loek for that: a calm little screen at home that shows what matters that day, straight from Somtoday. Timetable, homework, tests. There is nothing else to do on it.

No browser, no apps, no notifications. An e-ink screen that lasts about three months on one charge, and updates itself. It sits in sight at home, so as a parent you see at a glance the same thing your child sees.

A school only has to switch the connection on

Barlaeus gave us the room to test Loek properly for six months. For a school that is mostly hassle and little gain, so we are genuinely grateful.

Loek now runs through Somtoday Connect. A school only has to switch that connection on once: no cost, no app, no admin. Parents buy the device themselves.

Jochem put it most sharply at launch: you can only buy Loek if the switch is on, and at that moment it was on only at Barlaeus. Until that connection is on, a parent cannot buy Loek. The device needs the school data, and we only receive that if the school allows it. Every school that switches the connection on simply means more parents who have the choice.

Want that at your house too?

Discover Loek - School info without a smartphone.

Do you work at a school that uses Somtoday? Switch the connection on - once, at no cost, with no admin. After that, parents can order themselves.

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Based on LinkedIn posts by Jelle Niemantsverdriet and Jochem Baud, August 2026. Loek helps students focus on learning by showing school information without the distraction of a smartphone.