Pro tip #5: Cut down on grading time, use a tabata timer

There are some great books out there on improving teaching practice, pedagogy, history of education, ed policy etc. But sometimes the day to day minutiae can detract from grand plans, and what you really need are tips and systems to improve efficiency:

The problem: grading takes for. ev. er.

The pro-tip: use a Tabata timer to ensure equitable time spent on student work and improve your own work-life balance.

Steps:

1. Decide on the amount of time you are going to spend per essay (or quiz or test etc). Maybe 4-5 minutes depending on the rubric and how quickly you read.
   
2. Use a tabata timer like this one, or download an app for your phone that does the same thing.
   
3. Include the "work" time for reading/commenting on the student work, "rest" time is for actually recording the grade on a rubric, and the cycles is the number of essays you need to get through.

The screen shot below shows a class of 25 essays at 5 minutes per essay with 10 seconds to record scores on the rubric. As you can see, the time adds up quickly. But, at least now you have an idea of the overall time requirement.

Benefits: the timer keeps you on task, allows you to block schedule out the grading, equalizes the time per essay and hopefully frees up some time in your schedule for other things. 

Caveat emptor - this is a part of an occasional series, these are all small ideas, none are earth shattering, but they have been helpful to me. Have other pro tips? Feel free to share in the comments.

Favorite Quote: Tell me a story

Make me laugh. Make me cry. Tell me my place in the world. Lift me out of my skin and place me in another. Show me places I have never visited and carry me to the ends of time and space. Give my demons names and help me to confront them. Demonstrate for me possibilities I've never thought of and present me with heroes who will give me courage and hope. Ease my sorrows and increase my joy. Teach me compassion. Entertain and enchant and enlighten me.
Tell me a story.

- Dennis O'Neil

When I was an undergrad writing major one of my professors at Pitt, Peter Leo, shared the above quote with our class. To this day it remains one of my favorite quotes. While its purpose was intended for the writers who pass it each day walking in and out of the Marvel headquarters where Dennis O'Neil was a writer, I think its application is especially potent for teachers as well.

It is something I try to keep in mind on the (few) days I lecture in world history. The story of our class is the story of our species, our humanity - or at least a piece of it. I think Mr. O'Neil hit the nail on the head when he describes the purpose of that story.

* Edited 4:44pm: Added Peter Leo's name as my professor.

Pro tip #3: Stop collecting info via email, behold GoogleForms

There are some great books out there on improving teaching practice, pedagogy, history of education, ed policy etc. But sometimes the day to day minutiae can detract from grand plans, and what you really need are tips and systems to improve efficiency:

The problem: You need to find any amount of information from a group of people larger than 5.

The pro-tip: Stop emailing. Start using GoogleForms.

It truly amazes me that some teachers/administrators will email a group of 40-50 adults for, say, t-shirt sizes or lunch preferences, or for phone numbers and then manually copy and paste it all into an Excel or Word doc. This is absolute lunacy.

As a rule of thumb, any repetitive action is ripe for a life-hack to increase efficiency.

The much (much, much) easier way to collect data is create a single GoogleForm which will tally all results.

Advantages:

1. You can send the forms via email (embedded) no links to click.
2. You can standardize the way information is submitted (t-shirt sizes from a drop down menu instead of: L, large, bigger than average etc.)
3. With students you can easily see who has submitted so far.

We have used GoogleForms for the mundane, like collecting contact info from team members and students to more creative parent surveys during registration at a community night.

GoogleForms will not only collect everything so it is easily readable and sortable, it will also crate pie charts and graphs based on responses - making it incredible easy to send out top-line data to administrators or team teachers.

Still don't understand, quick video here:

PS - there are 80 more ideas for how to use GoogleForms in the classroom here.

Caveat emptor - this is a part of an occasional series, these are all small ideas, none are earth shattering, but they have been helpful to me. Have other pro tips?Feel free to share in the comments.

Pro tip #1: Hide quiz answer keys as comments in Microsoft Word

There are some great books out there on improving teaching practice, pedagogy, history of education, ed policy etc. But sometimes the day to day minutiae can detract from grand plans, and what you really need are tips and systems to improve efficiency:

The Problem: you lose answer keys for quizzes OR spend a lot of time making quizzes only to realize you forgot to put in an answer key while you made it OR you are reusing quiz questions from year to year and you know you had that answer key somewhere....

Pro tip: as you write the quizzes in Microsoft Word insert comments on the correct answers.

Advantages:

1. Easy to hide from students, just click Review > Final (to show again click Review > Final: Show Markup)
2. Keeps track of your answer choices between school years
3. Easy to move answer choices around to create multiple versions of the quiz/test - just copy and paste, the comment will move with the answer choice.
4. Easy to pull up if a student misses a quiz and needs to make it up in office hours (all digital instead of shuffling around papers on a desk)

Caveat emptor - this is a part of an occasional series, these are all small ideas, none are earth shattering, but they have been helpful to me. Have other pro tips?Feel free to share in the comments.