TEACHnology Today
Technology Integration Newsletter-May 2, 2018
Cool Tool of the Week: Planboard
https://www.chalk.com/planboard/
This is one tool that I'm just over the moon about. I'd compare it to your blue book planner but completely online with the ability to save websites, video clips, worksheets, Google Docs, reflections and standards (by tagging and adding) in one place!
Why It's Cool
- Signing up is simple, as you can click "Sign Up with Google" and use your school email and password.
- Planboard allows you to easily plan your academic days and to view your schedule and calendar by day, week, month and year.
- It's quick and easy to add and organize items for each class you teach.
- You can click to see an overview of your day or a weekly synopsis with one click.
- Things entered into the website can also be viewed and organized on your Chromebook, tablet, smartphone, or any other device.
- You are able to add links, video clips, worksheet and notes or reflections to each day.
- It also allows you to collaborate and share with other teachers of the same subject matter if you wish!
- You can search for lessons by keyword and standard!
- The tool I am most excited about in all of this is the standards tagger. For each lesson you have the opportunity to go into the state standards for each subject area (which have already been entered into the system---you don't have to type them in!) and tag relevant ones you are covering! This allows you to see an overview of standards covered, and may also be helpful in supporting your daily objective posts.
To Get Started:
- Go to the link above and follow the prompts. Be sure to select "Sign in with a Google account."
- Add your classes or subjects, and select the standards that go with it. I was astounded by the sheer number of standards they have available to choose from. I was easily able to tag the MN State Standards by grade level to my courses.
- You can create multiple sections of a class or subject, and give each a different color.
- You can then create your weekly schedule by dragging classes into a schedule and indicate if you'd like it to repeat daily, weekly, etc. For middle/high school teachers, select daily unless your schedule is every other day, etc. For elementary teachers, you will have to choose how to repeat, but most likely this will be weekly for you.
- From here, click around a bit to see your viewing options. You can view each class or subject individually or view your weekly or monthly synopsis.
My Planboard Example
I feel like planboard is helping me to organize and take my lesson planning to the next level. For years, I have used a Google Doc with table to sort out and organize the major theme for my lessons. It's worked for me as a brief snapshot of what I was doing each day and hour, but it didn't let me indicate standards right in my plan or reflect on how each of the lessons went, as it would get too long/wordy. Planboard is already helping me to expand on my ideas of what to cover in addition to allowing me to tag the standards I was planning on covering so that I can reflect on them and view details of lessons. I'm mostly planning to enter lesson data day to day (because who has time to type up a year's worth of lessons at one time?!) and use the planboard to help drive planning in the years to come.