Google

Google has become a major player in the education business these days and a tool that I have fallen in love with. My start with Google began when a couple of my buddies had me create an account for google, in order to share a Google doc with me for a camping trip. From there the love affair began. I have fallen in love with the tools that google has at its disposal including a centralized place where I can access things like contacts, my calendar, documents, and even class assignments from virtually anywhere. Something that I just stumbled upon was Google Forms. This changed the way I gave all my assignments at the end of this school year. With forms I create an assignment or test and then pick from several options of how I want to send it to my students. It cuts down on paper for my school, and best of all no more lost assignments or "my dog at my homework" excuses. There is also a handy add called Flubaroo that will grade the assignment for you.

All the students will need is a Google account and some form of smartphone, tablet, or computer and they are set. For my classes I have each student in a classroom that I have created in my contacts and I send the assignment out one time to all of them. They then receive an email, complete the assignment, and with the push of a button it comes back to me. It will even create a Google Sheets Document to help me organize. Currently my school is considering going to Google Classrooms. I know very little about how that works but so far I have been very impressed with the technology through the Google platforms. I would recommend if any educator have access to use these types of programs to give it a shot. Everything runs out of drive and I just watched a couple of videos on Youtube to help me figure things out. Good luck!