The iPad has quickly proven to be a very powerful tool for teachers. They can use it to organize classrooms and grades, keep notes on students, host in-class quizzes, and make instant changes to online student resources. This device has saved me countless hours of labor and allowed me to focus more on my students' and my own professional development.

One app I use frequently in the classroom is TeacherKit. It's by far the most useful free app available for teachers. You can input student names and photos, then arrange a seating chart of your class.

In addition, you can keep attendance and behavioral notes. The attendance chart comes standard with a present or absent marker (just tap the student) but you can also add more. For example, when I tap once the student shows as present, tap again and that student is absent, and one third and forth taps the students is less than ten minutes late or more than ten minutes late, respectively. I use codes to record different student behaviors, for example "P" with a thumbs-up is “good participation.”

Next, the grade book function is far superior and more user friendly than any other grading platform available at this time. Not only will TeacherKit keep your records, but you can export them and print them with a few taps.

You can create your own attendance sheets with Teacher Kit.

Finally, when you create student profiles you can add student email addresses. Once added you can send emails to students directly or to the whole class. Of course, we can all do this from our school’s software, but it is far more convenient to be able to do it from TeacherKit.

TeacherKit is now a “freemium” app. You can still do everything I have discussed for free. However, they will offer you an upgrade for $2.99 (not worth the money). Similar classrooms organization apps are SmartSeat , ClassDojo, and Class Act (freemium). In my opinion, these are inferior to TeacherKit. And no, I don’t work for TeacherKit, but I wouldn’t mind getting on their development team. If I only used this app on my iPad, it would be worth buying an iPad for it!

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