Staying Organized

Artsonia.com is an online children's gallery.  For art teachers it is a wonderful resource.  Here you can you upload your students artwork to archive and as a fundraiser. You can also organize your classes, monitor your students work, encourage your students by commenting on their artwork.  You can also assign grades, and communicate with parents.  My favorite feature is the huge database of high quality art lesson plans shared by other practicing art teachers.  

Online-Stopwatch.com is a very simple and effective time management tool to help students stay on task.  As the name implies this is a simple timer display.  It has many timer options and even has Classroom Timers that are more visual.  This visual timers are fun and  great for young children who can’t tell time yet.

If you are looking for a good way to digitize your plan book binder look no further than planbookedu.com.  This site at $25 a year is a great deal because you can upload any file lock in plan times, move lessons forward if a lesson need to be stretched out, copied for multiple classes and moved as schedules change. Teachers can also upload file so you can have you PPTs right there in you plan notebook. The only downside to this is that because it is solely internet based, if you can't get online you can't get to your plans because it doesn't not have an off-line application.

 Google Calendar is another way for teachers to stay organized.  What makes Google Calendar unique from other traditional calendars is it’s ability to share with other people and sync with multiple devices.  Once you have created your Google Calendar you can share it with your students and/or embed it onto a website, blog, etc.  You can also push you plans from Planbook into your Google Calendar to stay even more on top of it. To see more in-depth discussion about Google Calendar see my post by clicking here.

Here is an extensive list put together by Professor Marica Jean of Baker University of lots more tools to staying organized.

 Digital Organizational Tools for Educators

Class Dojo is a classroom tool that helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators. This is a favorite of many teachers.

LiveBinders is a way for users to bookmark and showcase WebPages in a categorical format using tabs to organize web url's. The user can select a broad topic category like "Learning Support Tools" designed to help struggling students and then organize sub categories around language development through the use of tabs.

Remember the Milk is a free personal organization tool that works online and with mobile phones. Remember the Milk allows you to add assignment due dates to your to-do lists via text, email, or directly on your account homepage.

PlanbookEdu.com is a website offering ways for teachers to organize and access their lesson plans online. Users can access their planbook from any internet connection, and customize or edit, using word processing software, online. Both free and premium service ($25/yr, group discounts) are available.

Thought Boxes is a task management service with a hint of mind mapping in its user interface. At its most basic, Thought Boxes is a place to create to-do lists. You can organize your to-do lists into groups that Thought Boxes refers to as "trains." Your lists can include basic text notes as well as links to other sites. The "trains" you create in Thought Boxes are basically categories for your to-do lists. For example, in the screenshot below you will see that I created a train for tasks related to my teaching responsibilities.

Doodle is an online scheduling tool that lets you "poll" attendees to see which day and time works best for everyone. The service is free and you don't even need to register to use it. To get started, just visit Doodle and click the Schedule an event button.

Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and exported as part of a notebook.

Evernote supports a number of operating system platforms (including OS X, iOS, Chrome OS, Android, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and webOS) and also offers online synchronization and backup services.

SignUp Genius -If you are a group leader and find yourself organizing volunteers, meals, service projects, or events... we want to make your life a lot simpler! Some school even use it for signing up for conferences. Coordinate it all online... FREE!

WebEx - Free account - upload and share an agenda, files, and contacts.Meet wherever you want – your office, iPhone, smartphone, even your iPad! Record and replay your meetings and share with colleagues.

Remind -A safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents.    Teachers simply sign up, create a class, add students, and start messaging. Students and parents opt-in to join classes via a unique class code.

WhenSend -WhenSend is a web app that lets you email people in the future. Use it to remind yourself of something, send your friends or family a birthday message, or send yourself a time capsule...there are thousands of possibilities!

Virtual Classroom Management

Timers
Online Stopwatch - count up or count down, multiple timers to choose
Time Me - can count up or down, with or without an alarm, in a loop or not, and in various colors, sizes and fonts
E.gg Timer - just add the time in seconds or minutes at the end of the URL

Noise Monitors
Bouncy Balls - spheres bounce when noise levels increase
Calmness Counter - turn the volume of the speakers down, then increase or decrease the sensitivity of the sound to gauge noise level
Traffic Light Flash File - click on the stop light colors to indicate volume
Traffic Light Flash File - award points within each of the stop light colors  

Point Trackers
Class Dojo - online class management system
Whiteboard Quiz Scorer - two team quiz scorer keeps track of points up to 10 questions
Class Badges - free, online tool where teachers can award badges for student accomplishments
Class Charts - data-rich seating charts and behavior management

Random Name Selector
Class Tools - embeddable fruit machine random name generator

Brain Breaks

GoNoodle - Without leaving the classroom, students participate in a variety of purposeful movement designed to get the wiggles out and refocus the classroom — all in five minutes or less