Schools are an ideal setting for the establishment of local-first software: Firstly, local-first software empowers students and educators to collaborate, create, and access data even in offline or low-connectivity environments, enhancing learning opportunities. Secondly, they serve a specific community, creating a defined and manageable user base, making it easier to implement and maintain specialised solutions. And finally, they are receptive to adopting innovative technologies that prioritize privacy, data ownership, and security over closed-source corporate solutions.

The Teens’ Labbook is a collaborative local-first web application that provides a digital version of the classical laboratory book for documenting experiments in an educational environment. It is designed and developed by the Software Technology Group and the Research Group on Biology Education at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, and the Teens’ Lab team of BASF Ludwigshafen. It provides the functionality to:

• Read background material, experimental descriptions, and tasks;
• Document observations by taking notes, photos, and measurements; and
• Collaboratively share these observations and evaluate/discuss the results.

In addition, it serves as a research and teaching playground to explore practical aspects of designing and building local-first applications.

At the workshop, we will present the major design decisions in building a reactive local-first application and the lessons-learned so far in developing, maintaining, and running the project.