Just in case you missed my Periscope on Friday, I chatted about my classroom planning tools. My intention was to talk about my online planner but as I was preparing to scope the delivery guys showed up at my door with happy mail! My new EC planner came in the mail...yay!
I use two planners for the year. I need the physical planner because #listersgottalist but I need the convenience of having the online planner too. So I'll take a second to share why I use my online planner and I'll post about my Erin Condren planner in my in my Everything Planners: Part 2 post.
I blogged about using planbook.com last summer and how much I enjoyed it. I was able to make believers out of some of my colleagues last school year resulting in us getting 6 months FREE membership! Wahoo! Everybody likes free right?! But on a real note this online planner is completely affordable. Membership is $12 a year, that's only $1 a month when you think about it! You can't beat that.
I came across this gem when I was looking for a planning app for my iPad. Planbook has a free one month trial without having to put in credit card information so I was sold on testing it out. Here is my top reasons I use this planner:
1. I can access this planner from anywhere.
I don't have to carry my work computer back and forth. If I'm planning at home I can use the computer there and when I get to school it's there!
2. I can print PDF's of my plans for the day.
If you work at a school where you have to turn in plans this makes life SO much easier. Just print them out and turn them in. You can use it for a sub and just print the plans for them or I when I know I have an observation, I just quickly print the plan out for whoever is coming to see me so they know what I'm doing.
3. I can attach my learning standards to each lesson.
This is true for national standards, state standards, and even standards for some parochial schools! How amazing is that?! At any point in the year I can check back and see how many times I have taught a standard and on what dates I taught it. That is so powerful especially at the end of the year when it's testing time and I have to prepare for review.
4. I can attach all files to my lesson each day.
No more searching through my computer for my files! I attach any documents or SMART Notebook files I need for that lesson and just pull it up when I'm ready.
5. Convenient sharing!
When I have student teachers, we usually share the account so that we can keep all of our lesson in one place.
6. There's an app for that!
Planbook has an iPad and iPhone app. I can easily pull up my plans if I need to refer to them throughout the day without having to be glued to my computer.
7. I can move lessons easily.
This year we had 2 weeks of back to back snow days. Crazy, right! Instead of having to erase and rewrite a bunch of things written in a planner, I simply hit the "bump" button and all of the lessons are shifted. As my kids would say, easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!
8. Search
If I need to refer back to an earlier lesson and I cannot remember exactly when I taught it. I can type in a key word of phrase from the lesson and It will bring up each time I taught the lesson.
9. Year to Year access!
As teachers we like to recreate the wheel a lot of times but sometimes we want to stick to a lesson that is tried and true! I have access to lessons from years past. I can simply pull up the lesson and add copy and paste it to my current year to use or tweak.
10. Sharing is caring!
You can share lessons with your colleagues, parents, or students if you teach older students. You simply create a key select what elements of the lesson you want to share (lesson, homework, standards, etc) and they can see what you allow them to.
Go ahead and try planbook, there is nothing lose! I'll be back soon for Everything Planners: Part 2. If you have questions for me feel free to leave them in the comments. Happy planning!
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