6 Awesome Ways Teachers Can Digitally Organize Their Files.
I bet you didn’t know #6.
Teachers are always surrounded by files. Worksheets, question papers, answer sheets, academic calendars, resources, lesson plans, emails, projects- teaching is another name for Record Keeping. Teachers have to efficiently organize these files in order to save and access them whenever needed. Here are 6 awesome ways teachers can digitally organize their files and make their work easier and faster.
Classrooms have created the most organized people in the world.
Don’t believe it?
Marie Kondo, a tidying expert and the author of ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”, is the cleanest person in the world. She started in Elementary School by organizing bookshelves in her classroom.
Another professional organizer, (Yep, that’s a thing!) Jeffrey Phillip helped his Grade 1 teacher in organizing the classroom.
When the workload seems overwhelming, a little bit of quick and smart organizing reduces stress and increases productivity. Digital tools have already proven to be a blessing for educators.
How can educators utilize them in organizing their files?
1. Digitally Organizing Lesson Plans Using iPad
Planning is the first step to organizing. Did you know that iPad can be used in creating and organizing lesson plans? It can also be used in any kind of teacher planning. Lesson plans can be created in Google Docs or a simple word file.
There are many advanced apps and online tools available to plan lessons. Nearpod, for instance, can be used to create and store video lessons and online teaching resources.
Canva is an amazing online lesson planning tool for teachers. It is free to use, with paid premium features. The best thing is that everything can either be saved in your smartphone, iPad, or laptop, or it can be saved in the cloud. So, teachers can access it anywhere and anytime. Take a look at a digital lesson plan created in a few minutes using Canva on iPad.
Planboard is a free digital tool to make, store and share lesson plans with peer teachers.
PlanbookEdu is another digital tool for teachers to organize their lesson plans.
Now, when all the planning is done, how can teachers organize their files?
By simply using their iPads.
Teachers can use their iPads to search for their lesson plans, either saved on the iPad or in the drive/cloud. This can help in quickly accessing the lesson plan in the classroom.
They can also handwrite the lesson plan using a good digital pen or Apple pen, like this.
How is digital planning better than traditional planning, using a pen and paper?
Well, first of all, it saves a lot of paper.
Secondly, it is easy to search the files by just typing a few words from the file. The relevant files or plans can be printed, if needed.
There are so many free digital stickers and teacher lesson planner templates on the internet. These can be downloaded and used as it is, saving both time and effort. The free teacher planner templates by Pocketful of Primary are worth mentioning.
Or lesson plans can be simply written on a word document or Google Docs and saved in Google Drive. It is easy to simply copy and paste the previous lesson plans and planners and use them in the current academic year. Also, digital planning allows teachers to easily move their plans and academic calendars from one gadget to another, like creating one on their iPad and accessing it on their smartphone.
2. Organizing Student Files and Professional Records in Digital Portfolio.
Why shouldn’t teachers have a digital portfolio? Imagine one place for all the files, professional development (PD) records, certifications, curriculum, syllabi, worksheets, test papers, question banks, student records, student projects, personal projects, and research papers? Teachers can use the same portfolio for years, adding on, deleting from it, and updating it as needed.
Let’s take a look at Bulb Digital Portfolio, the first-ever online digital portfolio for teachers.
Here are a few ways teachers can digitally organize their files on digital portfolios.
- Creating a customized cover page for a digital resume.
- Adding professional and personal details.
- Adding a required section to the digital portfolio.
- Adding links to social media teacher pages/profiles.
- Adding required pages to teacher portfolio and customizing it.
- Adding videos, images, files, audio, and links to previous work.
- Creating a collection of relevant works and choosing whom to share them with.
- Creating own Learning Management System with an Asset Library.
Here is a full-fledged digital portfolio made by a high-school educator, Brandon Coon on Bulb Digital Portfolio.
How does a digital portfolio help educators in organizing their files?
Students can upload their exemplary projects and assignments that the teachers can show to other students in the future. Teachers can integrate all their files into a single platform. Files can be transferred from other digital platforms and organized date-wise or subject-wise. Important teacher meetings can also be organized on a single platform. Teachers can also use the digital portfolio to organize and showcase the best work of their students to their parents, making communication easy.
A digital portfolio can help teachers organize their files on a single platform that can be easily accessed at their fingertips on a smartphone.
3. Digitally Creating And Organizing Notes.
Teachers have to take down a lot of notes during the day. Saving binders, notepads, and diaries can be very time-consuming. It also takes up a lot of space. It’s difficult to go through all the records and the relevant notes and information is missed in the heaps and piles.
The best way to organize teacher notes is by creating them on digital tools like a smart notebook, smartphone, or iPad. The benefit of digital notes is that they can be easily accessed because they are stored in the cloud.
One excellent digital tool for note-taking is Rocketbook. The best feature of this smart notebook is that teachers can handwrite the notes and scan them on their phones. Either The notes can be organized in the cloud or they can be printed. Many other smart notebooks can be helpful for teachers in copying and saving notes digitally.
Teachers can take down quick notes or minutes of meetings, highlights of a seminar or workshop, and keynotes of a PD in a smart notebook. All the notes will be saved in the respective cloud. These notes can be accessed on the iPad or phone. iPad provides a superb feature to add images or important screenshots. The same can be done on an iPhone too. Below are a few of the features of the note-taking app in an iPhone.
- Choosing A Template
- Writing Digital Notes
- Adding Images, Videos, Audio from phone or the web.
- Adding creative stickers, 2-D, 3-D graphs, and Interactive data charts and tables.
These notes can be accessed anytime from Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox.
Another excellent new feature of iPhones and iPads is to copy text from images using Google Lens. Teachers can just take screenshots and copy important information from it and paste it into their digital planners. These images can also be saved and organized in PDF format in the drive.
4. Digitally Organizing Files On Google Drive
Yes, we all know that Google Drive can be used to save and organize files. But did you know these amazing functions on Google Drive that teachers can use to organize their files?
- Starring The Files
The important files can be ‘Starred’ on Google Drive. The starred files can be quickly accessed. Also, the starred files can be frequently used by the teachers in other classes. These files can be easily moved to other folders, making it convenient to organize them in the designated folders.
- Using Side Panel
The ‘Side Panel’ on Google Drive provides many features for planning and organizing.
- Google Calendar
Teachers can use the calendar to organize their to-do lists and reminders. The events are stored in the cloud and hence, can be accessed from any device.
- Google Keep
Teachers can save their notes on Google Keep, set reminders, edit notes labels and organize their work-life like a breeze.
Files can also be organized under respective labels, like this.
- Google Tasks
Educators can also organize their tasks on Google Tasks either on their smartphones or desktop.
Add details of the task, date and time, and add subtasks to it.
Organize and sort the teacher tasks in preferred order or date-wise. This is helpful for teachers in searching for and completing their planned tasks.
- Adding Google Add-ons
Teachers can also add on additional organizing tools every time they work on a particular file on their Google Drive, using the plus(+) button icon.
There are many Google Marketplace add-ons available for organizing files.
- Organizing Shared Drives
Teachers work in groups. One classroom or grade is looked after by a group of educators. Since teaching is collaborative work, organizing the common resources, files and material makes teaching very convenient. Imagine all the files and records of one class in one place. The respective teacher can access it anytime.
Shared Drives can be created on Google Drive.
Teachers can create a new folder, Google Docs, Google Sheet, or Google Slide. They can also upload files from their phone or laptop.
The class folder can be shared with other teachers, parents, students, and the Principal. The same can be sent on messaging apps by simply copying the sharable link.
All the content and files of the whole team of educators can be organized in one place.
5. Organizing Emails by Creating Templates on Gmail.
If you are a teacher, you can understand how cumbersome it is to type the same text in every email. Teachers cannot send bulk emails as student reports are individual and private. So, does the same text has typed as many times as the class strength?
No
An easy way out is to create email templates on Gmail. Take a quick look at how to do that.
A general message can be typed and saved as a template. The same template can be used for every student/parent email, with some editing, if required.
This can save educators a lot of time and the emails can be conveniently organized by creating new separate labels, like Parents, Students, Co-teachers, Subject-wise, Grade-wise, etc.
6. Creating Class Website on Google Sites
Did you know that Google Sites lets you create your own website for free? Yes, and it’s super easy.
Teachers can create their class website and organize their files and folders on one website. The website can also be shared with parents, students, and school administrators to see the students’ progress and group work.
Google Sites offer many creative templates for educators.
Teachers can be creative in designing their class website by adding images and text.
Files can be uploaded from the drive and links can be embedded.
Different themes can be chosen or self-designed.
Teachers can be as fun and creative in designing their unique class websites on Google Sites.
Check out a sample class website created on Google Sites.
All the class files can be organized on a single platform on the class website.
Wrapping Up
As teachers do at the end of any productive lecture, let’s quickly recapitulate and summarize the 6 awesome digital tools that teachers can use to digitally organize their content.
- Digital Planning using online tools like Nearpod, Canva, Planboard, PlanbookEdu, or iPad.
- Organizing files on a Digital Portfolio using tools like Bulb Digital Portfolio.
- Digital Note-taking on iPad, smartphones, or smart notebooks.
- Digital Organizing on Google Drive using Google Calendar, Google Keep, and Google Tasks and sharing them using Shared Drives.
- Creating and Saving templates on Gmail.
- Organizing class files on a class website created on Google Sites.
If you are a teacher and organizing your stuff looks like a mammoth task to you, then these amazing tools will organize your files. You can save that extra time for your professional development. If you know a teacher then share these tools with them and make their lives easier and better organized. Try these awesome digital tools to organize your files, NOW.
