So I hit my breaking point. I had a tech-explosion where I had too much on the go, too much running ‘in beta’ and no clear vision of what I wanted.
Let me back up.
I try everything I read about, whether it’s in Twitter or Pinterest or…. Well just anything. And sometimes I dive in completely just to ‘play.’  I think this childish glee I get from trying new things really is one of the best parts of my teaching practice, but I starts to run one ragged rather quickly.

A few weeks ago I turned around and realized that in one school day I used all of the following:

1. Google classroom
2. Google drive
3. Google forms
4. Google docs
5. School web
6. Plickers
7. Socrative
8. Confer
9. Stick picks
10. Sesame snap
11. Pic collage
12. A standard mark book, and
13. Google sheets.

Oiy.
And all because I poke everything I find and want to play with all of it.

But it’s just too much to ‘do it all’ all of the time.  So in planning for next year, I think I’ll use the apps that best suit the tasks and focus more on good feedback than app mechanisms. Here’s my assessment plan for 2015-16:

1. Language and History: Exclusively through Google classroom
2. Math – interactive notebooks on google docs, linked on my site, built daily
3. Art- sesame snap (post snaps of work plus self-reflections)
4. Science- still working on an idea for this…. inquiry vs traditional?
5. Health – Google forms and Google Drive

So now I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, and for once it’s not the train. 🙂