Hooray for May!
While the weather seems to keep going back and forth, the calendar doesn't. We are rolling right through May and the end of the school year is upon us. The building calendars are full of all kinds of end-of-the year events and everyone is getting excited for summer. For me, the hardest part was trying to "close up shop." I wanted to make sure I had everything as nice and tidy as possible so that when I returned to things at the end of summer, I didn't feel like I had to do a bunch of organizational work to begin getting ready for the year.
And although I am a strong advocate for educator self-care, rest and being surrounded by the people and things that bring you joy, I also like looking and planning for the future while there is ample time to try out and learn new things (usually on a porch in a relaxed position with a beverage and absolutely no bells to tell me I'm out of time).
So for the end of the year, I offer these suggestions for closing up shop and at the end I might have a fan tech gadget or two to enhance your summer fun.
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Google Classroom Clean Out
One thing to remember is that there is a master folder in your Google Drive called "Classroom." Within that folder are subfolders with the title of EVERY class you've ever created or been a part of. Within those folders are all of the documents and student work you've created or assigned within that class. It might already be quite large and overwhelming to look through. Do not fear, every minute is another minute in which you can turn it all around. Here are several suggestions for a thorough "Classroom cleansing."
- Return All Work - make sure all assignments have been graded and returned.
- Do Not Copy Your Classrooms - this will make or continue to make a whole mess of things in your Google Drive. Instead, create new classes for next year and reuse individual assignments from previous classes.
- Export Grades - Open any assignment and click on the icon to export grades to Google Sheets. Having a backup is never a bad idea.
- Remove ALL Students - if the class is done and all assignments are returned and the students are done for the school year, remove them from your class. If you don't, they will still be able to access your class next year through their archived classes.
- Delete Student Documents - in the Classroom Google Drive folder, search for files NOT owned by you (you need to return the work first), then delete the files.
- Archive Class - the final step. This will remove the class from your active dashboard but you can still access all of the content if you want to copy assignments and resources into next year's classes.
Based on Alice Keeler's "Tech Tips for End of Year Digital Cleanup" -
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Clean Up That Inbox . . . You Won't Regret It
- Delete, Delete, Delete - I found myself hanging on to WAY too many emails. If it's older than this school year, delete it. If it's the end of the year and it's older than the month of May......delete it. If think it has an important attachment or something you need to keep track of for later, snooze it, make a task out of it and move it to a label folder or download what you need and get rid of it.
- Speaking of Labels - I've created about three dozen labels, when an email comes in, I give it a label. If I don't have a label that fits, I make a new label. Every email has it's place. Granted, many of them have a place in the trash but every email has it's place. If you're knowledgeable about creating filters, you can set your emails up to automatically add labels to specific emails (i..e. any email coming from my supervisor gets an "NBEC" label).
- Unsubscribe from Unnecessary Emails - The more I have signed up for apps, services, resources, the more I have been bogged down by subscription emails. I start to get very particular about signing up for things and reading all of the fine print about receiving emails about news and offers but it still doesn't stop the constant flow of subscription emails. Gmail can figure out when an email comes from a distribution list and will offer an "Unsubscribe" option. You can also scroll to the bottom of almost every subscription-based email and find an unsubscribe link. Unfortunately, this isn't only an end of the year task. I try to stay on top of this all the time.
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If You Care About It, Back It Up!
If you have files on your computer.....your physical device.....back them up! Once upon a time in the not too distant past, I had just started the school year. I had a relatively new computer. I had spent the previous years operating under the assumption that my computer was backing up to our district's backup servers (it was not). My computer, just for no reason, would not fully boot up and I had the "spinning color wheel of death" (Mac users will understand that reference).
Turns out, my hard drive had failed. Our tech staff worked to recover files from it but were not able to. I had lost pretty much everything that I couldn't recover from Google. I had only just started using Google Drive as cloud storage.
Back. Up. Your. Files.
If you have a Google account, it is as simple as going to your File Manager and dragging all of the files on your desktop or in your Documents folder and dragging them into your Google Drive.
If you have another method of cloud storage, most of them are also as simple as a drag and drop method.
Now, of course, you should create a folder or move them to preferred places in your Drive but I'll leave that up to you.
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My Favorite Summer Tech
This is an easy one, my LG XBOOM Go P2 Double Pack Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speakers. Being outdoors with my favorite summer tunes is a must whether it's loud and fun near the grill or peaceful and quiet on the front porch in the evening. These are great speakers providing ample sound. With the 2-pack you can link them and place them on either side of wherever you're hanging out. I found mine at Walmart but a search for the above title quickly pulls them up on Amazon as well. And as far as bluetooth speakers go, they're not that expensive.
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