Top 10 Class Management Tools for Educators

It’s safe to say that administrative duties play a big role in a teacher’s job. Teaching is not just about sharing knowledge with pupils – it also involves activities like attendance taking, grading, lesson planning and parental communication, most of which can be quite tedious and boring.
Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools and mobile apps that can revolutionize the way teachers organize their class curriculum, from attendance and pupil collaboration to grading and general classroom management. Here’s a selection of ten of the most interesting and innovative tools that help educators in their daily duties.
ClassMarker
Instead of wasting time printing paper quizzes and grading them by hand, teachers can benefit from this online test creator that instantly grades the assessments for you. There are five different test formats to choose from, including essay responses, which of course aren’t graded automatically. Educators can set time limits for every question or test, and for $25 a year teachers can receive results by e-mail, check score averages and generate quiz results statistics.
Sharp Class
A website that offers a set of tools for everyday class management, Sharp Class primarily assists teachers in behavior management. The site also includes features to manage attendance, parental contacts, classroom jobs, class websites, learning centers, seating charts and many more functions to make a teacher’s life easier.
Attendance on iPhone
This $4.99 app is great for managing classroom attendance. Instead of typing each student’s name, the teacher can upload the data from a CSV file or their address book. For each student profile, teachers can add a photo snapshot, and all the attendance reports can be easily emailed. The app features a ‘random student’ function which allows teachers to avoid directing questions to one student, too often.
Teacher Vision
A one-stop website with teaching resources, Teacher Vision features more than 22,000 models of lesson plans, worksheets and teaching strategies. You’ll also find complete classroom management guides, as well as ideas for games. There’s a yearly fee, but teachers can sign up for a 7-day free trial to test the resources.
Class Dojo
A free classroom tool for improving pupil behavior, Class Dojo generates data on behavior that can later be shared with parents and administrators.
SimpleVLE
A website that features a free set of classroom management tools – among them: an online quiz designer, lesson planner, grade book, student tasking tool and a feature to manage homework assignments. Includes a messaging service and a chat room to foster teacher-student communication.
Collaborize Classroom
Collaborize Classroom is a free web-based collaborative platform where students and teachers can engage and collaborate in a specialized online learning environment. It helps to increase classroom participation – teachers can take a poll, organize a debate, post a practice test, launch student-driven projects and generate comprehensive result reports for every activity.
Socrative
A smart student response system that helps teachers to create more engaging classroom activities by incorporating educational exercises and games, which can be adapted to smartphones, tablets or laptops. It also includes multiple-choice questions with pictures.
Edutopia
Edutopia is a website that grants a glimpse into the strategies used by other schools to motivate their students. Teachers can see how technology is integrated into curriculums or how project-based learning works in other institutions. It also includes video reports, commentary and blogs curated by education specialists and curriculum experts.
SmartTeacher
An app for virtual planning on the go – teachers can record lectures, plan future assignment schedules, record attendance and track their grading. Available only for Android.
 
Kelly Smith works at CourseFinder, an Australian online courses resource. She also provides career advice for students and job seekers and works as a freelance writer.