Tag Archive for: Free Software

Email Merge in the Classroom

A stylized illustration of a busy classroom environment. The image shows a man in a suit, viewed from the back, in front of a computer screen displaying an email application. The scene includes various classroom supplies and decorations, such as books, folders, and a clock on the wall. In the background, there are several students seated at desks, working on computers. The classroom is adorned with colorful books on shelves, a green chalkboard with diagrams, and white papers with notes on them

As a teacher of advanced high school students, I have such a different job than many of my peers in my building; but when I walk into my son’s elementary school, I can not get over how different his teacher’s day is from mine. I could never handle their job, and I would never want to try. 

However, secretly, I have always been a little bit curious/envious of the behavior management/parent communication apps that are available for elementary school teachers. ClassDojo looks like such a cool tool that I have my fingers crossed that one of my son’s teachers will use it so I can see what it is like.

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Resources to Make Your Student’s Presentations Shine

You might imagine that I would be a big fan of using novel presentation technologies like Prezi or FlowVella. I am… sometimes… but pretty rarely. Much more frequently I would prefer to use Google Slides or PowerPoint. I also think it is a better idea to teach students how to use these ubiquitous tools rather than have them rely on a flashy and/or proprietary format.

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School Calendar CSV File

I am a big believer in the helpfulness of digital calendars. Both at home and school, I have detailed schedules marking out all of my temporal obligations for as far out into the future as I can.

My school, like I am sure many others, has a rotation schedule that matches no calendar software on the planet. For many years I was forced to copy and paste each of the four calendar permutations throughout the school year to get my class rotation into my school calendar.

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Always Use Protection

When you drive your car, you use a seatbelt. It’s a no-brainer. Using a VPN on the internet is the same thing; you should be using one now.

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Twitter QR Codes

One of the features of Snapchat that I thought was cool when the app first launched was the Snapcode. It made connecting with people on the service pretty frictionless. You could just scan a branded QR code to automatically follow a specific person. No typing, asking clarifying questions or anything, just scan and go!

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