Teachers today are fortunate to have access to technological tools that make our jobs easier and minimize the paperwork involved in educating our students. I didn’t grow up with computers like today’s students did, but I’m very much on board with becoming more tech savvy and, yes, even accepting help from my students when I have technical difficulties.
About a year ago I bought myself an iPad after saving for it for months. It was going to help me organize my life, both at home and at school, and guess what? It did. I love my iPad and I can’t see myself living without it. Today I want to share with you some of my favorite apps and websites that I use in the classroom.
The first tool I use is DropBox and you don’t have to have an iPad to use it. It’s the icon with the red arrow pointing to it. It’s a free app that I have downloaded on my PC at school, my Mac and my laptop at home, my iPhone, and my iPad. The fact that I’m using it on windows driven computers and Macs interchangeably doesn’t matter one little bit.
DropBox is a way to store your documents “in the cloud” so that you have access to them wherever you are. You can even access your documents from any computer that has an internet connection, regardless of whether the app is loaded on the computer you’re using or not.
I cannot tell you how liberating it was for me to kick my jump drive to the curb. I can start my lesson plans on my computer at school, and when I turn on my computer at home, DropBox automatically updates any changed files. I work on my lesson plans at home as well as at school, and I can go back and forth like that as much as I want. With DropBox I’m always working on the most up-to-date copy without having to remember which computer has the most current file.
I also don’t have the problem of having some files on my computer at home and some on my computer at school. I have everything I need, no matter where I’m at.
That makes this control freak happy, let me tell you.
The other website and free app I use is Dictionary.com. I love it not only because I can look words up super fast and appear smarter than I am, but check this out.
Do you see that little blue speaker up there in the upper right corner? That magical little button enables you to hear the correct pronunciation of the word.
Imagine!
Is it me, or are there some words that no matter how many times you look them up, you still cannot remember how to properly pronounce them? Like scythe. That one slays me every time. I think I finally have scourge down. Probably because it is so fun to say.
The nifty thing is that students love to learn when they can use fun tools like this. Whenever I struggle with a word or how to define a word, they are quick to encourage me to look it up on the computer. In fact, they want to do it for me. They’re young and limber and very comfortable with technology, so why the heck not? Educate me, Little People.
One app I use is Teacher Assistant. I’ve only been using this one for a couple of months, but so far I love it. I use it to collect data about behavior, good and bad. I’ve tried many different ways to collect behavioral data and all of them were cumbersome and did not work for me long-term. This app is working for me, so Yay!
I got this screen shot from the Teacher Assistant website, so don’t worry, it isn’t one of my students. I wanted to show you an example without infringing on my students’ privacy. That, and I was too lazy to make a bogus student and their accompanying entries.
The next app I’ve been using for a while is called Stick Pick and it enables me to call on students randomly.
I can have multiple classes and groupings, so this app would work great for secondary teachers as well as elementary teachers.
This is what the sticks look like when I’m using them to call on students. I just touch the large can and it makes a shuffling noise before this next screen comes up.
I can choose to reset the stick if I want. I reset the sticks when I don’t want the students to get complacent thinking they’ve already been called and they can relax without worrying about being called on again. I can also mark the sticks as used, and that enables me to make sure everyone gets a turn. The beauty of this app is that the students never know whether I’m resetting the sticks or not, and they never question whether or not the selection is fair because I’m not the one calling on them, the robot that lives in my iPad is. They trust technology and that’s a beautiful thing.
This next app, Smart Seat, is a new app for me and I loooooooooove it. It makes changing seats a breeze. Before I found this app, I tried another app that didn’t work out so great. It was called Seat Charter and it stank, so I want you to stay far away from it. Please make sure you don’t waste your money on it. It had nice graphics, but I couldn’t control the graphics or group the students’ names with their desks. It was seriously more trouble than it was worth so I deleted it off my iPad in a fit of rage. And it wasn’t free. I’m still mad about it.
Smart Seat doesn’t have cool graphics but it works, and that’s what’s important anyway, isn’t it? What I like most about it is that I can make seating charts and tweak them on the fly. For example, the last time we moved seats I noticed that I had made a bad choice, so I just put my finger on the student’s name that I had to move, and I moved him. It was that easy. This screen shot shows me doing just that. While the desk is in transit, it’s yellow and larger. When I plop it into place it will look like all the others.
Skippy John Jones was naughty so I moved him to Alaska. The rest of the class is in the contiguous United States and Alaska is not, so that’s what we call the desk that is separated from the rest of the class.
I can also e-mail my seating charts to myself in pdf form so I can print them out for a sub. I love that.
The last app I want to share with you is more of a preview of what’s to come. With the Common Core Standards coming into play, I think we’re going to be seeing more apps and more flexibility within the apps. I have this app, CommonCore, because it was free and less cumbersome than flipping through my district provided standards that are printed on legal-sized paper in a 3-point font. You know how helpful that is, don’t you?.
This app has Math and Language Arts standards for all grades, but it is much easier to read than the spreadsheets that are posted online or that our districts print out for us.
This screen shot shows the 6th grade math standard 6.NS.1.
This particular app doesn’t allow you to make notes, it is just the standards.
I envision having access to an app that would allow me to make notes on each of the standards with regards to curriculum and resources I use and can use to teach each standard. How cool to have all of that information in one place and be able to access it anywhere. It blows my mind.
I hope you have the opportunity to use some of these technology time savers that I use in my classroom.
- Jill Scott, Controlling My Chaos
What about you? What do you use and love that you couldn’t live without? I’d love to try something new.
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