So You Want to be a Tech Savvy Teacher, huh?

    So you want to be a tech savvy teacher, huh? You want to stand in front the classroom with your smartphone or tablet and feel what it's like to grade papers, share documents, and print from the palm of your hand (or palms depending how small they are). You want to be the cool and hip educator who thinks it's OK to let students have their smartphones in the classroom and their laptops on the table. You want to brag to your family and friends about how you just discovered a cool new app in The Google Play store that is perfect for your students. Well my friend, with great power comes great responsibility (and one HELL of a phone bill). So, to help you get started in m-Learning (mobile learning), let me give you a few FREE Google (Sorry, Apple makes you pay for their's) apps that might come in handy young Jedis once you install them on your phone or tablet. *ALERT* *ALERT* You pretty much basically have to sign your life over to Google if you wish to take advantage of free apps and the best speech to text recognition on the market.  So let's start with Googlizing your phone and go from there.


Google Drive- Google Docs is now Google Drive. Store all your and your students' documents, presentations, and spreadsheets on your phone or tablet.



Gmail- Send and recieve mail via your phone or tablet.





Chrome- The fastest browser available, and the heart of Google. 





Ez PDF Reader- Edit your students' documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with your S Pen and send the corrected version back to the students via email.  Ez PDF Reader syncs all your documents via Google Drive to itself so you don't have to worry about closing windows or going back and forth between apps.

Engrade- The easiest and most popular online gradebook.





QR Droid- QR Codes are becoming the newest way to create and share websites, photos, documents, and spreadsheets.  It might not seem too important right now, but trust me, you need to become as familiar as you can with QR Codes.


Quiz & Poll- This is one of the earliest forms of Multiple Choice quizzes and class polls available for free.  Create quizzes and polls in a spreadsheet and share them via email.  The app actually averages out the class score so that it becomes easier for the teacher to determine what is being retained by students and what is not.


Quizmo- This is another Multiple Choice quiz creator, however, it also allows you to incorporate pics from your camera and photogallery.   The poll option is not available here


Camscanner- This app turns your smartphone or tablet into a fax machine!





Well, there you have it! A list of FREE apps on the Google market that every mobile teacher needs to have in his/her aresenal.  I hope you enjoy discovering just how awesome and helpful they are.

Best,
#mr.ford