Now that we’re a few weeks into the school year, and hopefully you’ve had a chance to take a deep breath – it’s time to think about how you’re providing electronic resources to your students and their families. With the number of people who look for everything online, chances are they would appreciate being able to locate your study guides, online resources, assignments and URLs that way too. And, especially for those little ones, trying to access online information with a long, complicated URL can be a pain! There are so many better ways to get students to their resources easily than having them copy a URL.

Here are just a few:

Grades 3-12 (although even K-2 students can learn to use this tool)

Google Classroom Google Classroom provides an easy way to share information (videos, documents, web links, images, PDFs and more), and to post assignments, worksheets, study sheets, and other classroom information. When students log into a Chromebook and go to the Classroom page (classroom.google.com) they are automatically logged in to all their classes. As the teacher, you can post assignments and have students directly submit their work through Google Classroom. If you want to you can allow students to comment, ask questions, or share their ideas. Classroom as a great storage area where all assignments, resources, and materials are readily available to students (and their families). I highly recommend it for every teacher. If you’d like any help getting it set up, please let me know.

Grades K-3 (although grades 4-12 may find some great uses for this tool)

Seesaw Seesaw is also an easy way to store and share information with your class, but it also provides an incredible digital portfolio of each student’s work. Sharing with families is optional, and students (and you!) have the additional opportunity to annotate, through video, audio, text, and drawing, on any piece of work. This is an exceptional way to record your students’ voices, whether they’re explaining their work, reading expressively, or doing vocabulary work. Although we often think of Seesaw as an elementary program, more and more upper grade classrooms are using it because of the flexibility and the potential! Let me know if I can help you set up your class.

Sharing with parents

Both Google Classroom and Seesaw have options for sharing classroom work with families. Particularly for Middle School students, who often need a way for parents to view assignments and study guides (and to be able to print out an extra copy), this is an excellent opportunity to connect and communicate with them.

School webpage

In addition to Google Classroom and Seesaw, our school webpage is a great place to post pictures, share student work, provide web resources, and store assignments and study sheets. You all have access to your webpage, and now that we’re a few weeks into the school year, consider how you can use this resource to your advantage. Your login is the beginning of your email address. If you have any questions, or want to learn to do more with your webpage, please let me know.

QR Codes

One additional easy way to provide URLs to your students with devices is to create a QR Code for the URL, and then post that QR Code somewhere in your classroom. You can even create URLs for videos, for text information, for images, for maps, and more, so QR Codes can provide a great way to create a scavenger hunt. One of the easiest ways to generate a QR Code is on the website GOQR.ME.  And, again, if I can help you use this, don’t hesitate to let me know.