Sunday, March 24, 2013

Conferencing Notes

I know we all have tried different ways to keep track of conferencing notes.  I have found two that work well for me.

I have made a template that fits six post-it squares.  I first took this template and printed it on different colors to represent the different content areas (2 of each color).  Blue - Math, Pink - Reading, Green - Writing, Yellow - Social/ Emotional, etc.. I laminated the color sheets back to back allowing for 12 post it notes.  I use matching post it notes to the color of the board.  This allows me to quickly know what the conference is about at glance.  I set up the boards knowing these twelve kids are my priority to conference with.  After the conference I move the post it to a binder that is divided into sections for each student.

What I like about this method is that it is easy to see who I need to conference with and I only need to move around the room with the board rather than a big binder.

This year I have been using the Confer App on my iPad.  It's $14.99 but well worth it.


You need to play around with it so you can use it to it's fullest potential.  Some of the things that I love about it.  I feel that I'm able to conference with more students in a given period because I don't have to type or write out all the notes.  I have previously entered teaching points, strengths and possible next steps into the app.  I also love that you can group your students based on any of your notes. This has helped me keep my groups current and effective.

Saving to the Cloud

I don't know about all of you, but I was finding that I have multiple copies saved of the same document.  I have documents saved on my home computer, my classroom computer, on multiple thumb drives as well I find myself emailing them to my various accounts.  I decided I needed to get organized.  I had been using dropbox for a few years and really like it but the problem is that I didn't have enough space to hold all my documents.  So I began looking into various online sites that allow you to save to the cloud.  There are so many out there, but in order to have the space I needed I would have to pay a monthly fee.  I was hoping to find something that would be free or a one time fee since I would be using this only for my school documents.  I kept searching and find BOX.com.  I've been using it now for the past month and I think it's great!  I was able to get 50 GB of space for free! 
Check out this link
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57569138/box.com-offering-50gb-online-storage-for-free/

or go directly to box.com