Good to be back on Cool Tools! I am glad to be revisiting Productivity Tools. I have started using Google Drive and Google Classroom this year in my library. The students have loved Google Classroom. It is very user friendly and the students have been able to pick up on it very quickly. I can link websites to assignments and it makes grading and editing the student's work very easy. The students like sharing comments with me and others. It also makes it easy for the students to complete work they miss because of band and/or special services they get pulled for.
I have been learning Google Docs and sharing documents with a committee I am on, which reduces the amount of emails I have to process. The feature I have liked most about Google Docs is the revision feature. A student thought she had deleted all of her essay and we were able to see her minute by minute revisions and restore the whole thing. You don't even have to remember to save anything - which is something younger students frequently forget.
I am using a new productivity tool this year that is not on the list - Planbook.com. Last year my district switched to ABCD days for elementary school, which required me to change my plan book organization. I was using a manual plan book and I wanted to switch to something online. I found Planbook and it has worked out great and it is only $12 per year ($1 per month!) You can copy and paste lessons, which for libraries is great because we often teach the same lesson multiple times per week. You can go back and easily modify lessons and it also has a search feature which I love. Here is a link - planbook.com, check it out!
