Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Weekly planning using Planbookedu

Last year I decided to see if I could find a digital planbook that would work for me.  I tried a variety of planbooks - free and paid but my favorite and the one I will be using again this year is Planbookedu.com

Why I love it:

It is easy to use.





Enter in a few bits of information and start planning. It even allows you to block off holidays. Very customizable - I choose the number of blocks in a day and what goes into those blocks.







Keep track of PLO or Standards. Some are pre-entered... but they are also customizable. Add your own. It makes answering - what did I cover this term or in this lesson very easy!











No need to re-enter repeated routines.


I can repeat templates daily or weekly. This makes scheduling in routines and repeating blocks much simpler.










Save file attachments right in your planbook and insert links too!





Planbook allows me to attach all sorts of file formats. Keep my smartboard files or PDF files or handouts with my lessons. No need to open different folders to find what I need.














It is easy to send to Teacher on Call and Admin if needed.


My whole plan book can be shared or I can share only a part of the book as a PDF, Word file or online. Because links and attachments can be added directly into the program my TOC's had easy access to the files I wanted them to have when I wasn't there.














Bump Lessons to another day. 


Unexpected assembly? Didn't get a lesson done? No worries. Planbookedu allowed me to bump my lessons by one day.







Search any planbook!!

It is a great tool for my terrible memory! I feel a little like searching was a special gift planbookedu put in just for me! When I first started using it it was not included. I contacted planbooks awesome customer support folks and within a few months the feature was added. Planbook is evolving and adding features and that is great.

There are still a few features I would love to see added  for example although I can use planbook on my iPad not all features are available there. They haven't created an app for that yet... and really they should. In spite of that overall this is a great solution for me.  The program costs $25 dollars a year.  For me it is money well spent.

So what did I learn at school today? Well I learned that even I can be organized with the right tool. What are you using for planning? Why do you love it? What is important for you in a planbook?