13 Classroom Technology Hacks that Will Change Your Life

Educational Technology

I would not call myself an early adopter of new classroom technologies, but I’m also not a Luddite. Because I want any technology in my classroom to be intentional, I would describe myself as a skeptical curator. If I’m going to invite technology into my classroom, it’s going to serve a necessary purpose. I’m not here for tech for its own sake.

Nevertheless, after 13 years in education, I have a set of technology hacks I recommend to everyone.

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Get the Right Hardware

My number #1 technology hack is to encourage you to find the right hardware. A lot of technology is determined by your school district, but there are some quick modifications that make everything easier.

First, a wireless keyboard and mouse are a must! With this, you can easily move around your classroom and remain connected to the screen.
Second, I would be totally lost without my document camera! I use my document camera every day. I know there was a time when I was teaching without a documenta camera, but I can’t imagine going back.
Along the same lines, keeping all your software up-to-date is the easiest way to avoid a lot of problems. No troubleshooting is more powerful than an updated device. This is the simplest of my technology hacks!
Anytime you’re dealing with technology, it’s important to stay organized. For me, a cord organizer and a password keeper are must-haves. These help me minimize clutter!

As a reminder, your school should be funding your classroom, so talking to your principal should be the first step in upgrading classroom tech!

Google Hacks

I teach in a 1:1 Google school. Students and teachers have Chromebooks, so I rely heavily on (and love) the Google suite. As a result, a lot of my favorite technology hacks are Google specific:

First, if you have an minor computer annoyance, there’s probably an extension for that. Chrome extensions are like little work-arounds and helpers that make Google Chrome run smoothly. I talk about all my most beloved extensions (and similar technology hacks) in this post.
Second, there are probably a dozen sites or tabs you need to open everyday. For me, that includes daily agendas and attendance. To make those tabs easy to keep and open, just create a Tab Group or a Bookmark Folder.
Speaking of daily agendas, I favor this free and very simple agenda template. Maybe it goes without saying, but I make a copy of the template for each prep. For example, English I has one agenda, and English II has another. You can even adjust the colors so you can distinguish agendas with a quick glance.
Maybe this is petty, but one of my technology hacks is just not to use anything that doesn’t integrate with Google Classroom. Recently, I was on a pilot for a new assessment platform; when I learned that it was not compatible with Google, I couldn’t recommend the product.

Google Classroom Hacks

Google Classroom didn’t exist during the first few years of my career, but I honestly don’t ever want to go back to teaching without it! These are my two best Google Classroom technology hacks:

If you provide any amount of feedback in the Google Classroom grading shell, you should be using the comment bank to capture and save repeated comments. This is especially helpful when you want to link students to a specific resource. Similarly, you should be purging and pruning that comment bank regularly to keep it from becoming an unwieldy monster.
Recently Google opened up the ability to create groups in Google Classroom. This makes it so much easier to assign certain assignments to specific students. For example, if you have two versions of a test, then you create Test Group A and Test Group B. Then, students only see the work assigned to their group. This is a life changer, especially if you’re assigning a modified assignment to one set of students and not to another.

Google Form Hacks

I have long been a Google Form addict. These are some of my most common sense technology hacks!

However, this year I experimented with linking all of my Form responses in one Google Sheet (rather than a seperate sheet for each Form). When you do this, Google automatically makes a new tab on the Sheet for each set of Form responses. I’ve really liked this because I can easily put my hands on data, and I can quickly compare data from Form to Form. You can also color-code each tab, so I can quickly sort data.

Similarly, Google Forms become easier to use when you create a template and just copy that template each time you need to create a new form. With this strategy, common questions like name and hour just repeat and your settings easily transfer from form to form. (The template Google Form is one of the tabs I keep in my daily Bookmarks Folder!)

Additionally, if you have some question types, images, directions, or passages that repeat across Google Forms, it is so nice to be able to import questions from one Google Form to another. This is one of those technology hacks that just makes life more efficient!

Staying Inspired!

With the digital world, there is no shortage of technology hacks. To stay up-to-date without being overwhelmed, curate a list of newsletters and accounts that you can follow for easy inspiration. These are some of my favorite go-tos for fresh technology hacks: