Organizational, Time Saving, Classroom Management Tools
Remind is a great tool for communicating with students and athletes. I use Remind with my track athletes. I am able to send them text reminders the night before a track meet to bring their uniform and track gear to school. Advantages of Remind is that I am able to have one way communication with my athletes without exchanging phone numbers. Students can sign up with their phone number or email and receive messages that I send out. Students join "classes" and may receive multiple messages from different coaches or teachers. I like that there is an app I can download on my phone that allows me to send out messages like a text without getting on my computer.
Although Remind is great, some students have experienced difficulty signing up. I have not figured out why, but sometimes students' phones do not work with the 81010 number listed. I wish that all of my athletes could use Remind, but not all of them have cell phones or texting capabilities on their phones. At least there is an email option, but that does not really help students who lack internet connection at home. These are all issues that I face by working in a low socioeconomic school, but they do not reflect on issues with Remind. Using Remind, I am able to communicate with more students than I had in the past.
Doodle is a great tool for polling people. This would be a great tool to use at school when trying to pick a time to meet with multiple people that do not see each other on a regular basis. Since school is out and I wanted to experiment with Doodle, I decided to poll my sisters on when we should go blueberry picking.
Doodle was very easy to set up and invite people. I gave my Doodle a title, picked times that we could go blueberry picking, and then entered emails to send invites to the Doodle. As people respond, a tally is created at the bottom to highlight the favored time. I like that everyone can view each other's responses. Sometimes one may adjust their schedule when they can see that a particular time is best for everyone else. There is also a place on the bottom for comments. 
Teachers Pay Teachers is a great website where you can find already made lessons and activities for all grades and subjects. When I was first introduced to Teachers Pay Teachers, I was a little skeptical. I did not want to pay for a resource that I could have created or one that did not fit my objectives exactly. Although I was told there was a "free" section, most of the teachers who raved about it were elementary teachers. I don't hold anything against elementary teachers, but sometimes they just do not understand that there are a lot fewer resources geared towards up level math. Just because something involves math and application does not mean that it follows the standards that I have to teach.
Well if you are an upper level teacher, especially one who teaches math, I hope I haven't lost you yet. I decided to take a break from the pool and give Teachers Pay Teachers another chance. I started by narrowing my search to "free." I was surprised by the many great activities I found! I decided to search for lessons geared towards functions, domain and range, polynomials. etc. These are all concepts that Algebra 2 students struggle with. I was ecstatic to find that there are teachers, who having found success with their students, are excited to share their resources.
Here are a few of my favorite activities that I found:
Teachers Pay Teachers is not the only time saving resource out there. If you use SMART notebook software, check out these websites with lessons and activities: SMART Exchange and Harvey's Homepage.
Online Stopwatch is a helpful tool to keep students and instructors on track. I project this timer when my students are working individually or with a group so that they can pace themselves to finish on time. It also helps me know when to bring the class back together to check for understanding.
Bouncy Balls is a tool that can help monitor noise level. This website utilizes a computer's microphone to assess the noise level in a room. When the noise level is low, there is not a lot of bouncy balls. As the noise level increases, more balls appear and they start to jump very high. It is a visual to help students gauge their noise level.
I'm excited to try some of these tools in my classroom next year. Hopefully you will experiment with some of these organizational, time saving, classroom management tools as well. In the long run, I hope to save time and energy so that I can give my best to my students and still have time for things I love to do outside of school.
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