New Roles, New School Year

I'm excited to start this new school year in a new role. For the last week I've been working in my new position as an Instructional Technology Facilitator for my county. I've spent the last 8 years working as a high school English teacher at the same school since I began my teaching career. So this year will bring many changes for me from new schools to work with, new faces to meet, and new technologies to learn. I'm really excited for all of these changes, but I will miss the students and staff at my previous high school.

One week from now, teachers will begin their final weekend of summer vacation and have their sights set on the new school year with some anxiety and some excitement. It's back to those Sunday night cram sessions of grading, lesson planning, and preparing everything else for the work week. And if those teachers are like me, the tv is on in the background with a football game on, that maybe you get to watch part of.

Returning to school last year, I began the transition of my files from flash drives to Google Drive. This was one of the best decisions I could have made for the school year. Since all of my students would have Chromebooks in class, sharing documents, assignments, and notes with them was a breeze. Also, adding Google documents to my website made my life much easier because the documents would automatically update as I made changes to them, and I didn't have to keep uploading them to the site. 

I remember my first year of teaching when part of my resources were saved on the computer, but most were in a file folder. Those file folders are still in my classroom until I get a chance to clean it out. There are probably still some overheads in there too. Long gone, for me, are the days of needing those file folders, but instead I had to figure out how to organize my drive that's filled with my resources, shared documents from colleagues, and shared documents from students.

So for teachers who are new to Google or want some more tips and tricks on using Google drive (like voice comments when reviewing students writing), here's a great site to give you 10 of these: 10 Things Every Teacher Should Know How to Do with Google Docs