Over my years teaching in a writing workshop, I have developed scads of forms and charts in an attempt to track my conversations with students during reading and writing conferences. Binders. Whole-class charts. Individual student charts. You name it, I have spent hours in Excel creating it.
And, every year, by the spring, I have ditched it, relying on my memory and my students’ memory of what we discussed last time.
That sounds irresponsible, I know. And it probably is. While I appreciate putting the onus on my students for remembering where we left off, I should probably be 100% sure of that, too. So, I am spending some time this summer re-thinking the way I gather data on student reading and writing performance.
I’ve toyed with the idea of tracking conferences in Google Docs. Last year, Allison used Confer, which has some strengths and weaknesses. Right now, I am thinking of jumping on the Evernote bandwagon.
Here are some of the interesting things I am reading:
Using Evernote to Confer with Students from Two Writing Teachers
Student Conferences with Evernote and KustomNote from Miss Spink on Tech
Organize your @evernote account with @kustomnote from Purely Paperless
Conferring Tool #2: Evernote from The Together Group (This post talks about importing rubrics into Evernote for conferring and tagging individual students’ strengths and weaknesses!)
Conferring with Kustom Note from Ms. Pana Says
Do you have a favorite digital tool for managing conferences? Brilliant tips for using Evernote that I should hear about? Leave a comment below or find us on Twitter @RebekahODell1 and @Allisonmarchett.
Rebekah, I love evernote! I use kustom note for lesson plans. I’ll have to try it for writing conferences. Yeah! Look forward to talking with you about how evernote is going. I’ll use it with my 9th graders and juniors.