How to cut down on all these paper records?

December 14, 2011 5:52 AM

I am a high school science teacher teaching five classes in three classrooms and my desk is in a fourth. I'd love to cut down on the amount of paper I have to schlep from room to room. Is there an iPad app available that would let me take attendance (and set absent as the default) and record hall passes, discipline, and parental contact?
posted by a22lamia to Education (11 answers total)

Couldn't you just create a form in Google Docs?
posted by KokuRyu at 5:56 AM on December 14, 2011

Before you start recording this kind of information electronically, make sure you are allowed to.
posted by devnull at 6:04 AM on December 14, 2011

The Internet is very unreliable here so google docs wouldn't cut it. I'll double check that it is okay to do this electronically but I am pretty sure it is.
posted by a22lamia at 6:16 AM on December 14, 2011

The iWork app you'd use to make spreadsheets is called Numbers. I assume it would work well for your purposes, unless you want to get really fancy.

There is also Mariner Calc, maybe a cheaper alternative, but I don't know anything about it.

There are also rumors that a version of MS Office will be released as iPad apps sometime in 2012, but I don't know details.
posted by Wretch729 at 6:53 AM on December 14, 2011

I don't have any direct experience with these, but there are a bunch of apps listed here.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:03 AM on December 14, 2011

Oh. And Teacher Tool looks (at least from the outside) like it could be quite good.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:04 AM on December 14, 2011

It's a long shot, but if your school uses PowerSchool, you could use PowerTeacher Mobile.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:41 AM on December 14, 2011

When I taught(college lab sections), I used the Attendance app on my iPhone taking attendance. It worked quite well, and if I remember correctly, had quite a few other features/customability that I didn't use.
posted by rockindata at 9:01 AM on December 14, 2011

Seconding devnull; FERPA is pretty stringent about the privacy of student information, and you'll want to make sure you don't run afoul of it, regardless of the medium.
posted by evoque at 9:08 AM on December 14, 2011

I've been thinking of creating such an app for the iPhone for a couple of years. Never got around to, because of lack of time, and because I'm not sure if there's a market for it. Anyway, sorry this is not really an answer, except that when I last checked, there didn't seem to be an app like that in existence.

I second the suggestion of using a spreadsheet (that is stored locally, not on the cloud). For college courses, we have course management systems like Blackboard, which you can configure for attendance and records, but I don't know if that's available for high schools.
posted by redlines at 11:53 AM on December 14, 2011

It's another online site, but Jupiter Grades might be helpful? I've only used it from the student side, but I found it a few days ago and immediately thought of this question.
posted by lilac girl at 9:33 PM on December 18, 2011