Saturday, September 15, 2012

TeacherKit, the almost perfect teacher app!

So we've just finished the first week of school, and so have wrapped up our first week of using the tablets in the classroom. So far, the iPad is performing well - great even. Battery life, functionality and portability are all even better than anticipated. Last year we were using a combination of paper files and Lenovo laptops to do the same job - and the weight and battery life are both night and day improvements (no offense to Lenovo. They make a great product but it's apples and oranges).
So far, the app I've been using the most is a free one from ITWorx, it's called TeacherKit. It's a slick looking teacher app that will hopefully replace my paper attendance as well as my mark book.
So far I have set up my classes and entered some marks...manually entering each student into each class is tiresome, but we usually have to do that anyways in our alternative setting since we are not directly connected to a school board server. One of the many joys of working in a satellite site.

Also proving frustrating, I can't figure out how to produce any reports with it (monthly attendance reports would be great) but otherwise it works very well. The interface is very nice looking and so long as my pad is not loaded with excess stuff (I had to delete some movies) it runs well with little to no lagging. It would be nice to be able to move students from class to class, but the grade book is super easy to use and allows for a much more portable platform - useful for observational reporting (the bread and butter of the alt ed classroom.
I'll report back in a while, but so far this app gets a level 3. ;)

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