Monday, May 28, 2012

Google Docs... Wow!

Wow!  I have been gone for a while and I have been having quite the month.  Several unfortunate events have happened to our family back to back and it has really taken up alot of my time.  What I will say is that I have come to love my Google Docs!  A while ago, I transferred my school documents to Google Docs and boy, did it come in handy this last week.  While I was sitting in the Emergency Room,  (my husband needed emergency gallbladder sugery)  I needed to send my sub plans to my team leader.  Of course,  the only device that I had with me at the time was my phone.  I wasn't sure that it would work but I was more than pleasantly surprised that I could locate, update, and send my sub plans from Google Docs to my team leader with just my android phone!  What a great resource!

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Teacher organization part 2

One of the things that I dread every year is organizing parent volunteers.  There are so many events to coordinate throughout the year and there are many many parents who would love to give up their valuable time to come up and help.  Field trips, science lab, carnival, class parties, parent readers, parent teacher conferences...  you get the picture.  In the past,  I have given some of the sign up jobs to my homeroom mom and sometimes I have done them all.  Very often, I became overwhelmed with keeping track of all the dates.  This year I decided to try sign up genius.  Wow!  Can I say how much I love this?  I created sign ups for all my different needs and then asked the parents to sign up for what they wanted.  I sent the link out by emails and I posted the links to my website.  Gotta love technology that makes life a little easier!


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Ahhhh! End of the Year Chaos!

Wow!  It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted!  We were sorting out a family emergency and it has sure been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  It is a crazy time of year.  As the year is winding down, i am always overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork and meetings and other things that come up at the end of a school year.  I have decided that I am going to spend the next couple of posts talking about technology that helps me try to stay on top of all this craziness! I am by no means an expert and I would also love to hear from others about what they use to help manage their chaos. :)

This week I want to talk about Evernote.  I just started using this program a couple months ago and I absolutely LOVE it.  I have it downloaded on my home computer,  my android phone, and on my school computer (YES.... it wasn't blocked by our filter!)  With evernote,  I am able to create all sorts of notes and categorize them.  For example... I have created folders for each subject at school.  I also have created tags for each student.  Let's say that Joey has done poorly on an addition math recording sheet in math stations.  He was supposed to use manipulatives to act out a subtraction problem then he was supposed to draw a picture of his manipulatives and record the subtraction number sentence that describes picture.  Instead,  Joey recorded an addition number sentence rather than subtraction.  Clearly Joey needs some small group or one on one reteaching.  In the past,  I would have either kept his recording sheet OR I would have to run to the copy machine, make a copy, send the original home, blah,blah, blah...  Not now!  with evernote, I take out my phone, snap a picture of the recording sheet, create a note, tag it with Joey's name and file it in the math folder.  Now I can search on any device that I have evernote on and my note with pictures and annotations will be available.  I can also add the reteaching evidence to the note when I am finished!  Super easy and convenient for paper phobic people like me!  I have used evernote to bring evidence to ARDs, planning meetings, and to make to do lists!  I absolutely love it and I hope to become more and more paperless.