Start the Year Right With 3 Free Tech Tools for High School Teachers

The start of a new school year is a busy time for high school teachers.

Between setting up a classroom and lesson planning, it can be difficult for them to stay up-to-date on the latest technology trends. New digital tools can make it easier for teachers to manage their class and more efficiently assess a student's behavior.

Below are three tools that seasoned educators recommend for fellow teachers to try to excel this school year.

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-- Google Classroom: The new tool from Google is designed to help teachers stay organized and streamline their work processes. The product is a part of Google Apps for Education, which includes Google Drive, Google Docs and Gmail, among other productivity tools.

One of Google Classroom's main features is the ability for teachers to digitally distribute assignments to students, which students can subsequently turn in digitally. Teachers can grade and give each student feedback without dealing with any papers.

"When you get 60 assignments handed into you at the same time, it's very overwhelming," says Heidi Bernasconi, a biology teacher at Clarkstown High School North in New City, New York, who participated in a pilot program of the tool last year.

Bernasconi says she is more efficiently able to grade assignments, which are sometimes three or four pages long each, with the digital utility.

But beyond grading, teachers and students can also communicate digitally with each other in Classroom.

"They might be doing their homework at one o'clock in the morning when I am sound asleep," says Bernasconi, of her teenage students' work habits. But with the communication tool in Classroom, her students can ask each other questions in a safe digital environment that she monitors.

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-- Socrative: This popular free Web, tablet and smartphone tool allows teachers to quickly assess student learning.

Teachers can create digital quizzes using Socrative, which students can complete on the Socrative website or on the tablet or smartphone apps. Teachers then receive instant feedback and personalized reports for each student.

Ohio high school teacher Ben Spieldenner says that he likes how the tool gives him swift reports on his students' learning, which he uses to adjust his teaching on the fly.

"It also gets them to see that their smartphone is more than just a toy. It's also a tool," says Spieldenner, who teaches English at Ashland High School.

He's used Socrative for warm-up activities and reading quizzes in the classroom, and even made a trivia game with the tool.

-- Class Dojo: The behavior management tool easily allows teachers to track student behavior and reward students for positive performance during class.

Students can track their own behavior using the smartphone app, and teachers can send parents behavior reports.

Kelly Connolly Hickey, an English teacher at West Babylon Senior High School in New York, says she wasn't sure if her students would like using the tool because it seemed as if it was geared toward younger students, but that has not been the case with her older students.

"They love getting recognition for doing good things," she says.

She says that sometimes older students with difficulties may be used to receiving negative feedback, but with ClassDojo she has found a way to easily give individual positive feedback to them.

"Once I compliment them, it sometimes really changes their experience in general in school," she says. "They have a more positive attitude."

Class Dojo also released a messaging app last week, through which teachers and parents can communicate without engaging any contact information. The app sends messages quickly, similar to texting, which appeals to Hickey.

[Check out more technology trends for teachers.]

Still need ideas? Graphite is a website that offers teachers reviews of the best educational apps, games and websites. Think of it as the Yelp for teacher tech tools.

Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com.

Alexandra Pannoni is an education staff writer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com.