Digital Documentation

Every year I get completely overwhelmed with the shear amount of paperwork I'm expected to keep on my students, especially those in RTI or who are receiving extra services. Even though I consider myself an organized person, I find myself falling behind on documenting and filing, and it can be so difficult for me to what what I'm looking for. That's why I completely fell in love with Blair Turner's, One Lesson at a Time, idea to document digitally. I started the school year with this new strategy, and it's working better than I expected!

We're expected to document any failed assignment and to keep paperwork on all of our RTI students' progress monitoring assessments. This year, rather than making a paper copy of each item, I am making a digital copy that is saved as a PDF. I have everything saved in a secured dropbox account, and I can access the paperwork anytime, anywhere.

I bought Scan Pro on itunes for $6.99. I bought the paid version, because of one awesome feature...

I can sync the app with my dropbox account! I use my ipad to take a picture of the assignment. Once I save the picture, I'm allowed to crop and edit before it scans and saves the document. After the document is saved, I can then use the drop down menu to have the file sent to my dropbox account.

In my dropbox account, I can access completed copies of all of my students' work. I've also started keeping a copy of my faculty meeting notes, so I can have a hard copy to refer to all year, without creating more desk clutter. I can access this from any computer as long as I have my username and password.

I now have a PDF copy of my students' work that I can easily access.  This is so nice for RTI meetings, parent conferences, and digital portfolios. Once I before more efficient with this system, I'd love to try giving my students more ownership over the whole process and allowing them to create their own digital portfolio.

Now, if I can just find something to grade and record those grades for me!