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Work smarter, not harder, a colleague told me during my first year of teaching, when she found me half-buried in piles of paper. Dealing with classroom workflow-planning, distributing, collecting, grading, and returning graded work-is just one of the many responsibilities we teachers have. Without efficient routines, however, all of the paperwork can quickly become one of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of our jobs.
Several teachers from the NSTA e-mail listservs have sought advice on going paperless. For example, a teacher from NSTA's general science e-mail listserv wrote: "I'd really like to work on using less paper this year. I'm tired of making tons of copies, and most of the time students lose them. How can I create a paperless classroom?" (See Figure 1 for the icons of all the apps mentioned in this article.)
Tools for planning
Streamline the planning process with an online planbook. Chalk. com's Planboard is a free online planbook for K-12 teachers (see Resources). With Planboard, teachers can create customized schedules and documents ranging from yearly scopes to weekly lessons to detailed reminders. They can also create editable, prefilled lesson plan templates and upload attachments, photos, and videos for their lessons. Finished plans can be saved as PDF files or shared with others through email. A teacher from a Facebook science teaching group who uses Planboard shared: "I love that with Planboard, I have the ability to plan [my] classes and even put groups inside those classes!" Other free planbook options include Planbook.com and PlanbookEdu (see Resources).
Tools for document storage
A teacher from NSTA's chemistry e-mail listserv wrote: "How can I keep track of all the resources I have for my different units and courses?" Two popular options suggested by listserv members are Evernote and Google Keep (see Resources). Both Evernote and Google Keep can be used to digitize documents. Users can simply point the camera of their mobile device or tablet and let the apps do the work!
Evernote is a free, cloud-based software service designed for creating, organizing, and archiving various media files. Unlike other cloud storage services, Evernote saves files as "notes," which can be categorized into "notebooks." Files can also be saved with tags for easy searching. The Evernote app is free, and you...