At the end of the school year teachers often start mulling over changes to their teaching strategy and methods for the upcoming school year. Educators often seek ways to improve involvement in their classroom. One of the biggest concerns teachers suggest is their student’s ability to remember what they’re required to do or upcoming tasks.
Gone are the days where most students are utilizing an agenda book. Here are some tools for reminding your students of upcoming assignments.
eTask:
eTask is also known as the Electronic Teacher Assignment Kiosk. This is a tool your entire school district would likely use, as opposed to you by yourself. With eTask you create a page that can list your education, teaching credentials and a listing of your class activities and homework week to week.
This tool creates class activities in a table format, so it may be difficult for students to synthesize the information if you store multiple weeks at once.
Website:
Within most school districts there is an encouragement to have your own website associated with your teaching. Most school districts will push using space allotted on their own web server or using Google Sites. My recommendation is creating your own website. This allows you to store all resources you’re using and add to them as needed year to year. The best way to go is to have your website be like a blog, so you can constantly produce content and students will follow the material posted that day and come back to the website as needed.
Check with your district’s technology director before creating your own website domain outside of the district’s space or Google Sites, as often school districts like to clarify that what is listed on your personal website is not necessarily checked by them.
Remind:
Remind is a text messaging tool that is becoming a widely used application for classroom reminders. Teachers setup the application to remind students and parents of anything they feel necessary via text message. The application is similar to the Honeywell Alert services most school districts currently use, but this tool also includes students in the information.
Check with your district’s technology director for approval of using this tool prior to use.
myHomework:
myHomework is an application that teachers can use to add homework assignments to. Educators can then set priority deadlines and reminders through this tool. The app is available on a number of platforms and through their website. The application offers a free version and a $4.99 per year version as well. The application can be purchased by individual teachers and by the school district.
This application does seem to have some limitations in the free version, like many applications.
Remember to talk with your school administration before utilizing any tools that aren’t commonly used within the district or unfamiliar to your district’s administrative team. Be able to convince your administration why the tool will be helpful within your classroom.
