Technology used in the classroom can be very beneficial for learners, but technology can also be useful to teachers. Teaching is not just about interacting with students and content, there is almost as much time, if not more, spent doing administrative duties. Lesson design, data management, communication and collaboration, and professional development are also important demands on a teacher’s time. Technology can help organize these tasks and minimize redundant or tedious aspects associated with them.
The first administrative resource I would highly recommend to any teacher is Google docs. Google docs has a few different types of documents. I usually use the spreadsheet for my data management. My school has an educational management system that offers data management services, but frankly, it’s too much information to be immediately useful. The data in the system is great for deep dives when needed, but I don’t need to wade through all that data every day. For my day-to-day needs, I want to know three things about each of my students at a glance: their progress in the course, their grade, and the last time I spoke with them. These needs may be different for a traditional brick and mortar teacher, but as an online teacher, these are my must-haves. I open my spreadsheet each morning and glean the information from the data management system and input it into my Google spreadsheet. It helps me track student success and target those students that may need additional support.
Communicating with students individually is the primary way I not only support them academically, but also form the student-teacher relationship. My choice of tools for communicating to students outside to the provided framework of the school is also a Google product—Google Voice. The school in which I work does not have landline phones, but instead relies on the internet to provide soft phone service. Google Voice is a free service that provides a Google user with a phone number that can be called from any type of phone. There is also texting capability. This very much enhances the administrative ability of the teacher, because the teacher can have access to the student from his/her smart phone without giving away the teacher’s personal cell number. The teacher is no longer limited to communicating with students only during “office hours.”
Remind is an administrative application I use to mete out reminders to students and families. I have found that it is a convenient and non-invasive way to remind parents to do their tasks of entering attendance (at my school, that’s a parent’s job) and mark their student’s lessons complete. It serves to remind families about state testing dates and locations, as well as allow for two way communications. Individually, I use Remind to text parents about a student’s excellent or unexpectedly poor performance on an assessment. Often, they have insight as to the reason for the low score and we can collaborate on how to best re-visit the important concepts. Collaboration with parents is one of the aspects of teaching that I have found revolutionized by technology use in the classroom.
The first administrative resource I would highly recommend to any teacher is Google docs. Google docs has a few different types of documents. I usually use the spreadsheet for my data management. My school has an educational management system that offers data management services, but frankly, it’s too much information to be immediately useful. The data in the system is great for deep dives when needed, but I don’t need to wade through all that data every day. For my day-to-day needs, I want to know three things about each of my students at a glance: their progress in the course, their grade, and the last time I spoke with them. These needs may be different for a traditional brick and mortar teacher, but as an online teacher, these are my must-haves. I open my spreadsheet each morning and glean the information from the data management system and input it into my Google spreadsheet. It helps me track student success and target those students that may need additional support.
Communicating with students individually is the primary way I not only support them academically, but also form the student-teacher relationship. My choice of tools for communicating to students outside to the provided framework of the school is also a Google product—Google Voice. The school in which I work does not have landline phones, but instead relies on the internet to provide soft phone service. Google Voice is a free service that provides a Google user with a phone number that can be called from any type of phone. There is also texting capability. This very much enhances the administrative ability of the teacher, because the teacher can have access to the student from his/her smart phone without giving away the teacher’s personal cell number. The teacher is no longer limited to communicating with students only during “office hours.”
Remind is an administrative application I use to mete out reminders to students and families. I have found that it is a convenient and non-invasive way to remind parents to do their tasks of entering attendance (at my school, that’s a parent’s job) and mark their student’s lessons complete. It serves to remind families about state testing dates and locations, as well as allow for two way communications. Individually, I use Remind to text parents about a student’s excellent or unexpectedly poor performance on an assessment. Often, they have insight as to the reason for the low score and we can collaborate on how to best re-visit the important concepts. Collaboration with parents is one of the aspects of teaching that I have found revolutionized by technology use in the classroom.