Tech Tool Time Savers : A Teacher's Best Friend

As a busy mom of four, full time teacher, and full time church planter, my time is precious to me. I'm constantly looking for ways to budget and save my time without losing quality by cutting corners. I rely on technological advances on the daily to help me accomplish all my responsibilities and goals. This is particularly the case in my home life, let's just say... I'm deeply thankful for my dish washer. 

However, this is equally true in the classroom. As I learn more about the various tools available to me as an educator I am excited to see how I can effectively implement them to not only salvage my precious time, but to use the time I do have to its fullest! Enriching student communication and collaboration through google groups, or having forms grade my quizzes so I can do a hands on activity with my students is worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned. 

There are so many things from this week that I'm excited to take into the 2021 school year. 

For example, scheduling conferences using google calendar appointment slots can help my department streamline the conferencing schedule in the fall with less headaches.

Additionally, I can't wait to add "choose your own adventure forms" to my middle school classroom to engage my pre-teen pupils who might have stayed up a little too late playing Fortnite. For this age group, choice is so important. Giving them some ownership of their learning and giving them an opportunity to use technology in the classroom is going to be a game changer. I can even for-see having my students build one for our Civil War Unit- one that their parents could take and interact with ( This will be particularly helpful if we end up learning remotely this year and cannot hold our annual civil war night).  

I'm also eager to use hyper docs in my classroom. I've been using digital worksheets created in slides for a few years, but I've never unlocked the power of google docs in my classroom. I love the interactive nature of these documents that allow students to work at their own pace and dig deeper if time allows. 

While learning the technology can be overwhelming at times, I'm confidant that using these tools to enhance lessons that I'm already proud of, will transform my classroom for the better. Using the tech to streamline organization and classroom management will afford me valuable time back in to my school day so that I can build relationships with my students and better facilitate the learning process, analyze their progress and continually improve my methodology and lessons. Hooray for educational technology!