LifeHacks for Grading:

Should you use your built in district grading system or use one of the gradebooks below?

EasyGradePro: This gradebook is great if you want lightning fast grade input. CON: You cannot post grades to the internet.

Engrade: This gradebook is platform agnostic and all online. You can do a lot with posting student work to the site with TINY URLs. CON: Can be blocked by districts / privacy policies, etc.

Thinkwave: I used to use this program when I first started, but I haven’t used it in a while.

Quia: A great website for creating student tests and quizzes to give online.

LifeHacks for Student Behavior:

Danny’s Example of Positive Behavior Support: We really need to try and make good positive behavior supports for our students. Sometimes they really need explicit teaching on what socially appropriate behavior is. Below is an example you can use to give students points when they act the way you want them to act.

Class Dojo: Brian mentioned this app in regards to classroom management.

LifeHacks for Saving Time (Apps or other things that save time)

Doceri: Easy way to annotate text on your mac from your iPad. Wacom Tablets: A grade writing utility for those who don’t have the dough for an iPad.

Active Inspire: Great for writing and creating student lessons to be used with a wacom tablet.

Smart Notebooks: Another great tool for writing and creating student lesson plans. This can be used in conjunction with s SMARTboard.

Launchbar: A great timesaver for the mac if you really like using your keyboard instead of always using the mouse.

Alfred: Another great task launcher, but with workflow support.

Fantastical: A great replacement for quick filling of a calendar appointment.

Setting up Custom URLs for Alfred: Danny’s tutorial on how to setup custom URLs for using Alfred.

Hazel: This app is crazy good. Mac Power Users have a particularly good workflow on how to use it here.

Lifehacks for Student Motivation

Socrative: A learning response system for students. You can get a response from students instantly from their smartphones or computers. Students can vote on best responses and create quizzes on it for things like an exit ticket. Socrative breaks down your student data in an easy-to-read excel file.

Alphasmarts: Another learning response system if your students cannot use smartphones in class.

LifeHacks for Faculty Collaboration:

Google Docs

Dropbox

LifeHacks For Storage

Carbon Copy Cloner

SuperDuper

Time Machine