Instantly grade multiple choice tests and quizzes

I recently tried out the website GradeCam and I have to say that I love it!!  It's so simple and works very easily.  First you print out the bubble sheet.  Each student is assigned a number and you have print out the sheets with the number pre-filled in if you want.  Second you give it to the students to fill out.  Third you use the camera on your computer to scan the sheet and it automatically grade it!

I really like the fact that I can give instant feedback to the students and that it gives you feed back on not just which questions students got wrong, but also how many students choose the other answers.  The other nice thing is that you have a digital record of the students' answers, which is nice if you are one who hands back tests for students to keep.

Some people have been concerned about the camera issue, but you do have a few options.  If you computer has a built in camera you can use that.  Document cameras also work.  I even have a simple digital microscope that is basically a camera that works as well.

I do have the mention that there are several pricing plans for this website.  There is a free version that allows you to give 10 question tests and then several other plans with features such as multiple versions of a test and tests up to 100 questions.


Here is a video that gives an overview of GradeCam.

As with everything it's something that you need to try yourself, but I like the idea of this even for quick in class formative assessment.  Have you used this or something like it?  What are your thoughts?

Online Planbooks

This past year I converted to an online planbook midway through the year.  There were two reasons that contributed towards this decision.  First, I always found my planbook being buried underneath a pile of stuff on my desk (I admit, I’m a little messy).  What was the point of me taking time to write in my planbook if I could never find it to look at it?  The second reason was that I felt that it was a waste of me time to keep rewriting my plans year after year.  Of course I change things up, but for the most part my plans don’t change too much year to year.

The first website I came across was PlanBookEDU and this is the one that I used last year.  I really like the way that it is set up.  I teach two different classes each with an extra period on a rotating basis.  I set up my planbook to have 4 periods.  One for each of my classes and one for each of the rotating extra periods.  It’s simple to copy things to show up every day, every other day or every 4th day.  For example, I have it set up that the title LAB shows up every other day on the period I have set up for my Chemistry lab.  Now I can look ahead a few months and not have to count days to see if it’s a lab day or not.  There are a lot of other features that are also offered, that I didn’t take advantage of.  These include things like attaching files and adding in standards.  One feature that I really like and want to point out is the bumping feature.  What happens to me sometimes, and I’m sure it happens to you too, is that something comes up (fire drill, students not understanding the lesson or other interruption) and you can’t finish your lesson.  Now everything needs to be pushed back one day and PlanBookEDU has a bumping function to easily do that.

The one feature that made me pick PlanBookEDU was the fact that you could copy your entire planbook over to next year and then go in and edit individual lessons that you would want to change.  Well, last month when I went to copy last year’s plans over to next year I found out that this was one of their premium features (of which you need to pay $25 a year).  Needless to say I was more than disappointed.  I have seen discount codes for this site before, so I’m hoping one will pop up soon as I would pay $5 or $10 for this feature (because it’s so much of a time saver), but for this one feature I think $25 is just too much.  I could simply just change the dates on my current planbook, but then I would loose any record of this past year’s book.

I went looking for another website that was similar to house my planbook and I came across Planbook Maker.  Once again, there are features that are free and some that you have to pay for.  While I don’t like the interface as much as PlanbookEdu, one thing I do like is the fact that you can copy planbooks as part of their free plan.  What I don’t like is that you can’t automatically block out vacation days and you can only copy things on a daily basis, you can’t copy things to repeat every 2 or 4 days.


In the end, I have to say that I like PlanbookEDU the best, but I just hate that you have to pay for the feature that I want the most (the feature to copy the planbook year to year).

Do you utilize an online or electronic planbook?  What do you think of it?  Which one do you use?

Online Textbooks

Recently I had to good fortune of guest posting on my favorite tech blog, Free Technology for Teachers.  I wrote about how I have been using free online textbooks in my classroom.  Take a look at my post and let me know what you think!

19 Pencils

19 Pencils is a website that has the goal of being your one stop shop for things on the Internet that you would want to use with your class.  They have a short video where they describe their vision.  Basically it allows you to save websites that you want to use with your class to your 19 Pencils class page.  It also has a Chrome extension for those who use that browser. This allows you to add websites to your 19 Pencils account without having to go to the 19 Pencils website.  Then students can visit this page and have access to all of the websites that you want them to visit.

In addition to just being a place to collect websites, you can also give each student their own log-in so that you can track how often students log in.  There is also a feature to create assignment and quizzes.  This feature has been giving me some trouble on my PC and didn't work well on my Mac either.

Right now they are still ironing about the kinks of this website as it is a beta.  I like the concept of this website and I am going to hang with a bit to see if it gets better (another review will follow if it does).  Until it's out of beta, when you create an account you are given the premium account for free.  In the future this will change and there will be a free and a premium account, but it's still unclear what features you will have to pay for.

My thoughts?  I like the idea of this website and I think it does have potential.  I would have students read through websites and then take a quiz on the content afterwards.  I really like this for when I am absent, because it's very self directed and I don't have to worry about which sub is in for me.  The user interface doesn't always work as it should, but hopefully that will be fixed.

Have you every used 19 Pencils?  What do you think of it?  Do you have a similar website that you use and like better?

PDF to Word

Many people have pdf files that they would like to convert to word documents because they would like to edit them. Here are a couple of things that I have used to complete this task.

1.Adobe Acrobat Pro - This is not the same Adobe Acrobat that you can download for free, but sometimes schools have it installed on their computers and you don't even know. If you open a file in Adobe Acrobat Pro you will have the option to "export" your document as other files such as .doc or .rtf. If you aren't familiar with .rtf, it's stands for rich text file and it a simple standard file that can be opened by almost every word processing program.

One thing I don't like about this is that the word document you create puts every paragraph into a text box. I usually take the 5 minutes to pull everything out of the text box and delete them because I feel it gives me more control over reformatting the files.

2. Google Doc/Google Drive - When you upload a file to Google Docs, you get a few options about how you want to upload it. One of the options asks if you want to "Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents". If you choose this option, Google will create a Google doc out of your .pdf. Then you can download it as a word document or leave it as a Google Doc.

When you do this, the file created will first have an image of your .pdf so you can see what it originally looked like and then it will have the text file. The formatting will be off so you'll have to play around with that a bit.

3. PDF to Word - This is a website where you can upload your pdf file and they will e-mail you the word document. I have to say, that I like this one the best in terms of formatting. It kept my font and formatting almost 100% the same as the original pdf.


Have you tried any other websites or programs that worked well for you? Please share your thoughts on them!

Google Drive

I'm sure that many of you are already familiar with Google Docs, but it's time to say good-bye to Google Docs and hello to Google Drive.  If you haven't heard yet, Google Docs will be becoming Google Drive.  Current Google Docs users have the option to upgrade to Google Drive now instead of waiting for the full rollout.  Here is a link to Google's Blog that tells you more about Google Drive.

So what's my impression of Google Drive?  To me Google Drive combines the online publishing that Google Docs gave you with the syncing power that sites like DropBox gave you.  You can install the Google Drive program on your computer, phone and/or tablet and then no matter where you are you will have access to the files that you have placed in your Google Drive folder.

I installed Google Drive on my computer at work have have placed many of my folders in the Google Drive folder.  This way, if I leave my computer at home, I can still have access to my files.  In addition, I know that they are backed up if something were to happen to my computer.  I can also create a document in the Google Drive Cloud and when I turn on my computer it will be downloaded there and I have to access to it once again.

As with anything, I say just try it out and see if you like it.  I wasn't sold on it at first (I hate downloading things to my computer), but you have to give it a shot.  I ended up downloading it on my school computer and using it that way with my work Google account, but didn't download the program on my home computer for my personal Google account.  I did download that app for my phone, but then decided I didn't use it enough so I deleted it.  I can still access Google Drive through the web browser on my phone.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Google Drive.  Love it? Hate it?  Don't even want to go near it?

Giving online quizzes or homework assignments

This year I started using Google Docs Forms to give online homework assignments and will (hopefully be giving online quizzes with it soon too!).
I really love it because it's so easy to create assignments and share with others.  I even figured out to to create a formula that would automatically grade the assignments for me (the number one things I was looking for).  The things I didn't like was that there wasn't an easy way to share the results with the kids and to have to the kids see their results as compared to the correct answers.  Then I was reading one of my favorite tech blogs, Free Technology for Teachers, and he wrote an post about Flubaroo.  I tried it out and it was awesome! so I had to share it with all of you.
Not only does it automatically create the formulas for you to grade the assignments, it puts the answers in a second spreadsheet so you don't mess up the original.  In addition it will e-mail the students their grade and there is an option to also include the test questions, with their answers and the correct answers.

Of course there are more robust online assignment programs out there, but not all of them are free like Google Docs is.  I recommend everyone give it a try if only to get the students used to online assignments (as many state and national tests are moving in that direction).

Have you tried Google Docs for online assignments?  What do you think?
Do you have something else that you love?