Never Enough Time!

This week time seemed to just elude me - everything took longer than it should have. Whether it was working on a particular site or just trying to print, all of it took longer than I expected. Last week, time was the enemy. I felt like this teacher who just wanted to get out simple directions and got waylaid in the process:

To be productive, I had to reprioritize, which means the usual Friday posting is getting done on Saturday. I know I'm not the only one who has had weeks like this. Because of that, this week I wanted to post about ways to save time:

- Changing the work - so all can work smarter not harder - 
This article from Edudemic lists some of the more popular technology tools out today. Within the description, you can see all the different ways teachers use these tools to not only engage students but also to improve the overall working of the class.

This site provides technology solutions to several aspects of a teacher's life that eats a lot of time. Some of them seemed obvious, but there are some interesting options out there I had not considered as well.

- Working on what matters - 
When reading about best practices, where do they tell us to emphasize our time?
What work do we invest in that brings the best results in our students and in our own work as educators?
For example, this study by Allingham and Belanger reveals student opinions about teacher feedback. Based on this study, and others since with similar results, teachers can see where to spend their time providing feedback in a way that improves writing and where to spend less time because the feedback is not as effective.
In addition, what kinds of formative assessments can quickly inform you as the educator how the student is managing the content and where/how the teacher can provide additional support? This site and this site look at technology and formative assessment and suggest different options depending on the goals of the implementation. This site lists others but does not provide as much information. We can use formative assessment to guide the process, allowing us to work on what matters. With help from some of these tools, that information can arrive to us quickly and in a variety of ways.

- Realizing limitations - 
Finally, this article comes from a site in the UK devoted to strategies for time management for teachers. In this particular post, the article talks about achieving a sense of balance and knowing our limitations. For me, this meant letting it be okay to leave something until tomorrow. The world kept spinning, so I guess some things really can wait...