By Chad Reid

It doesn’t take much for a teacher’s workload to turn into pure chaos. Grading and planning are enough to keep anyone busy, but throw in meetings and after school activities on top of that? Yikes.

The good news is we live in a time when you can use helpful tools stay organized, sane, and happy. And best of all, it’s not expensive to use the right tools to improve your processes. All of the apps below will help you keep organized and save time, so you can focus on teaching and inspiring students.

More: 12 Pefect Apps for the Busy Teacher

JotForm

You won’t realize how helpful online forms are until you start using them—and there’s no better way to collect and manage important information than with JotForm. Create online forms for scheduling parent-teacher conferences, surveying students and parents, signing students up for activities and responsibilities, and quizzing your classroom.

Because JotForm offers the ability to collect signatures electronically, it’s also an ideal paperless alternative to permission slips.

Asana

Asana is the gold standard for task management tools, and the organizational benefits for teachers are almost endless. Keep track of student progress on major projects, collaborate with other teachers and colleagues on lesson plans, or just organize all of your to-do list items in one place.

As an added bonus, Asana is a great tool to introduce to students who have group projects and need a better system to work together.

Whooo’s Reading

Managing independent reading and students’ reading progress can be tedious, but Whooo’s Reading keeps all of the information you need in one place. You can set different goals for each student, assign reading homework, check progress against mulitple literacy standards and best yet, assignments can be auto-graded for you. If you feel like your independent reading management is all over the place, this is the organization app for you.

Mindmeister

Sometimes brilliant ideas just need to be mapped out. That’s where Mindmeister comes in, an online mind-mapping software that helps its users brainstorm, take notes, and present their ideas in a more visual and organized manner.

For teachers, it serves as a powerful way to not only plan lessons, but to facilitate critical thinking among students by acting as a springboard for group projects or classroom discussions.

More: How to Improve Reading Comprehension With Mind Maps

ClassDojo

Great communication facilitates great organization. And there may be no better communication tool out there for teachers to streamline communication to students and parents than ClassDojo. The app gives teachers the ability to emphasize positive feedback with students, and allows for private messages with parents.

It also gives parents the ability to check on their student’s progress in real-time, which saves you from having to deliver uncomfortable or surprising news during parent-teacher meetings.

IFTTT

Don’t worry about pronouncing it; it’s an pseudo acronym for “If This Then That” and it’s a powerful tool for organizing both your classroom your life in general. IFTTT lets you automate functions without having to manually do them (don’t worry, no coding required!).

For instance, you could have IFTTT text you when a parent sends an email, alert you if inclement weather is going to threaten an after-school event, or automatically publish class blogs to social media. This is a must-have for busy teachers.

Feedly

Feedly is an easy way to get all of the content you want to read delivered into one place. For the busy teacher, this is a great way to organize anything worth reading into one, easy-to-access place. And better yet, it saves you from having to scan the web to find new content. Use it for daily news updates or to find content for lessons, supplemental reading and student homework.

Be Focused

Have you heard of the pomodoro technique to boost productivity? It’s a time management method that mandates that you work intensely on a project for 25-minute intervals, then take a short break. It takes a special kind of brain to be able to grade assignments for hours on end until completion. But for normal people, Be Focused is a way to organize your valuable time using the pomodoro technique so that you get more done and feel less stress.

More: 10 Ways to Save Time Grading With Google

MailChimp

Teachers might not intuitively think to use an email marketing service to stay organized, but MailChimp’s benefit to educators can’t be understated. Try this email service for sending classroom newsletters, progress reports, field trip information, general updates, and reminders to parents and students.

If you’re in the habit of sending emails by copying and pasting from a list or spreadsheet, this will greatly improve your communication process, making it less time-consuming, more organized and automated. Plus, it’s incredibly easy to use.

EDpuzzle

If you’re looking for a streamlined way to incorporate more video in your classroom, then EDpuzzle has you covered. It’s a tool that allows teachers to pick existing video from YouTube or Vimeo, add lessons and notes to the videos, and cut out relevant sections of a long video to show to students.

Edpuzzle even allows you to narrate videos using your own voice. The real benefit is that you can present a video that’s helpful to your class and do all of the prep work within one platform.

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