Start From Scratch

It's July. It's time to rethink you class. In fact, it's time to throw everything in the trash and start from scratch.

One of the dangers of being an experienced teacher is falling into a rut. If you have taught the same course for a few years, you now have a good, solid unit for every month of the school year. You are past those rookie days where you figured out what you would do in each class the night before the class. Things are more comfortable and predictable. However, if you become stagnant, you run the risk of turning into that fossilized teacher, the one that says, "Pupils, this is the ditto worksheet for day 57."

The way to avoid becoming that fossilized teacher is to redesign your course. Keep it fresh and relevant, and the time to do that is in the middle of the summer after you have had a chance to recover from the previous year but before you have to return to campus for orientation. Here is what I would do every couple years to make sure my class was the best it could be for the students.

1. Nuke your whole curriculum. Don't become emotionally attached to anything your have done in the past because if it doesn't help students learn, then it must go. It was a sad day when I realized that my free response journal assignment was taking a lot of class time but was not making my students better writers. I threw it out and used the time in class for a research paper writing unit - a unit so effective that students wrote me thank you notes after graduation telling me how it helped them in college.
   
   
2. Get a huge piece of paper so you have lots of room to work. I would just use butcher paper on the floor, but you can put it on the wall if you are more of a spacial thinker. (Have you noticed how detective shows these days put all of their evidence on the wall? It is the new visual way to represent "thinking hard" and it is a lot more interested on the screen than a manilla folder.)
   
   
   
3. Begin at the end. Ask yourself what your students need to master when they leave your class. This should only be 4-8 big skills like "Compare the journeys in adventure novels to student's own life," "Solve for two variables in an equation," or "Identify the major parts in plants and name their functions." Revisit the Content Standards and make sure that your students are learning what they should. You might even ask the teachers in the grade above yours what they would like incoming students to do. Write these big skills across the top of your page like column headings with lots of space in between.
4. How can the student demonstrate that he or she has mastered that skill. Though a test or quiz may be part of the assessment, find a project or activity that will show the skill but is also engaging. Does the project deal with a real life problem? Is it a task that adult would do in the workplace? Is the project tied to the student's interests or hobbies? My students always worked much harder and wrestled with the subject matter much more when they were working on something that was meaningful, especially if they had to present in class. A Google search for the subject and "project" is always a great place to start. Write this final assessment project below the corresponding skill. Feel free to keep assessment 
5. At the bottom of each skill column, write what you think students will be able to do - related to each skill - when they enter your class. This can be something like "Read  a novel with basic comprehension," "Solve a simple equation," or even "No prior knowledge of botany." How will you find out if students are actually starting your class here? Will you give a pre-test, a questionnaire or survey, an interview? A quiz show game during the first week of class is a fun way to get to know your students and find their baseline.
6. You now have a series of columns with an exit skill at the top and an entrance skill at the bottom. Now list the facts and skills that the student must learn to master those exit skills. Spread these intermediate steps through the column in the order that the student should learn them.
7. Next to each intermediate step, write when the student will complete it. Is it something, like my grammar lessons, that students will learn and practice once a week throughout the year? Does a column of skills correspond to a unit that your class will work on for a month or two? Be mindful of the academic calendar so that units wrap up before the end of a semester. Don't have a project due right after winter break. Save a fun, interesting unit for the time between spring break and the end of the year when students start to lose focus - this is the time of year when we read "Midsummer Night's Dream" aloud in class with props and costumes because the students loved it.
8. What is the best way for students to learn this information? I am a big proponent of Blended Learning, and I believe that this is the place to introduce it into your curriculum. You know know what your students need to learn, take a moment to think about how they will learn it. Face to face lectures are necessary at times, but most teachers use lectures for everything. Moving content delivery out of the classroom frees up time for discussion, collaboration, and one on one help. Here are some alternative methods for delivering content to students; which intermediate steps lend themselves to each?
1. Reading text in an article, website, textbook or teacher-created slideshow
2. Audio lesson - much easier for the teacher to make and post online
3. Screen cast - teacher's audio paired to a slideshow
4. Online video - found on YouTube or some other source
5. Teacher-created video - these are time-consuming, but can be used for several years or shared with peers. Check in next week for my guide to producing educational videos.
6. Educational website - online games or helpful websites like Clickademics Essay Engine allow students to work at their own pace. The teacher may then use the time in class to help the students who need extra instruction.
9. Reintroduce and adapt old activities that fit your learning goals for your students. Now that you know what your students will be learning this year, you can look back at activities you have used in the past and see if they are still applicable. Maybe you held a mock trial in your class during a debate unit. If you have eliminated the debate unit, see if your students can hold a mock trial of a character in a novel or a person from history. The good news about flipping your class and moving content delivery online is that you have more time in class for hands on activities.
10. Add in grades and assessments. Grades are not the most important thing in education, but you don’t want to find yourself unable to demonstrate your students’ progress. Scan over the year and make sure that there are enough grades to measure student performance. Ideally, you should have a similar number of weighted grades each quarter or trimester.
11. Prepare to launch. Are there any activities that will require preparation or special equipment? Plan ahead so that you can secure resources at the beginning of the year. Hopefully, you will be filming a few of your lessons. Film a couple during the summer to give yourself a head start.
12. Copy your plan in a way that is easy for you to use during the school year. If your school has a way that they like to record the curriculum, use that form. The administration at your school will be impressed.

This will take a few days of your summer, but you will enjoy the benefits for the whole school year. And so will your students.

By the way, I found this book helpful during my master's program. It is what spurred me to do this the first time.

Blended Learning, Because Teachers Are Not a Content Delivery Device

“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.” Do you remember this line from Good Will Hunting? The main character, Matt Damon, says it to impress his love interest, Minny Driver, but every viewer who has attended college knows it is a ridiculous thing to say because an education is so much more than just the material you learn from books. It is just as ridiculous as teachers who claim that they can’t put their lessons online because it will make them obsolete. Let me explain.

I recently spoke with a friend who felt that the other teachers at his school resist ideas like blended learning because they are afraid that they will be working their way out of their own job. What they don’t see is that by sticking with 200 year old teaching techniques, they are lecturing and testing their way out of a job. Teachers that fail to take advantage of new, effective, inexpensive, easy-to-use technologies will go the way of Blockbuster video. This was the inspiration for founding Clickademics and building Essay Engine.

Think of it like this: my second favorite cocktail party conversation starter is, “Who was the teacher that made a difference in your life?” (My first favorite is, “If you could have a super power, would it be flight or invisibility?”) It is a great question because everyone always has an interesting answer. Every person I ask had a teacher in their life that helped them grow. And when I ask how, they always have a story about how the teacher pushed them hard but made every class fun, held them to a high standard but cared about them deeply, or acted as a mentor during a trying time. Not one person has ever recounted a story of a teacher that gave really great grammar lectures or an educator that designed especially effective exams. And if you want to play devil’s advocate and refute my argument with a teacher who was a great story teller and gave the most riveting history lectures, I reply - how much better would it be if that teacher filmed her riveting lectures, got them perfect, and added photos and illustrations, posting the lessons online so that countless students could watch them? Because right now, that history teacher is retired, and all of her riveting lectures have evaporated into the ether.

No, teachers matter because they invest in students, not because they repeat information. That is why every good teacher went into teaching in the first place. They want to prepare their students for life ahead, but they only get about 125 hours with those students if they are secondary teachers. Why would they want to spend half of that talking at the tops of the students’ heads who are furiously writing notes?

Putting lectures online does not take the teaching out of teaching; it takes the boring content-delivery part out of teaching. In fact, in a perfect world, an old timey teacher should have told his students to go home and read the textbook chapter for homework, and that would be the content-delivery. Every piece of content that a student could ever need to know is in a textbook. That is why the Matt Damon character claimed you could get a full education for a $1.50 in public library late fees. The problem with that? Students don’t read the textbook, and if they do, they don’t remember them. A teacher filming her lessons and putting them online is the same as creating a fun, easy to consume textbook. It just happens to not be in book form. 

The real learning does not come from consuming tons of content - my apologies to every AP history teacher in the country. The content consumption is just the first step, the introduction. The real learning happens when students use the knowledge, manipulated it, apply it, compare it, question it, argue with it. There just is not enough time in a school week to let real learning happen if the teacher spends half the week lecturing. Let the students consume content on their own time. They need hours with a teacher and with peers to apply the knowledge, and that should happen during class time.

This is the reason I love online learning but am vehemently against a full online education for students before graduate school. Adolescent and young adult students need interaction. Asking them to read a bunch of online content, write responses for everything, and mix in a Skype session or two is selling them short. A pure online education should be a last resort, perhaps for students with medical issues or extreme distance hurdles. 

When I was in the classroom, my students always worked their hardest on the real-life projects. Though I did all I could to make the projects fun, they were also challenging, as challenging as a big exam or an essay. When I held my mock trial or gave the students my grid of literature projects, they would pour themselves into it to make their projects excellent. And when we did our six week research paper, forget about it. Other teachers would complain that the students were neglecting the homework for the other classes because they were working so hard on their research papers. Those kids really learned, and it wasn’t because I was lecturing.

I got some complements from students on my lectures, but it wasn’t because they learned so much. It was because I told corny jokes. However, you can tell just as many corny jokes when helping small groups with projects or leading class discussions. 

Teachers, you do not need to give the same lecture on the Teapot Dome Scandal or Covalent Bonding five times a day every year. That is repetitive grunt work, only half a step above assembly line work. Give your lecture once, really well, on video. Embed your PowerPoint slides and interesting photos and diagrams, and put it online. Spend your class time interacting with students as they interact with the subject matter. Don’t lecture to kids about facts; talk with kids about ideas using the facts. 

What’s that you say? Won’t it be hard to put lessons online? Isn’t it difficult to develop meaningful activities and discussions to fill the class time that used to be taken by lectures? Doesn’t this mean making a whole new curriculum like a first year teacher? Yup. Those are all true. I realize that all good teachers are completely over-worked and don’t have any time for tasks on top of their current duties. Here are some things I would prescribe to ease the transition:

• Take it one step at a time. You may not have time to change your whole curriculum, so change one unit at a time. Make a goal to convert one unit to a blended learning unit each quarter. 
• Partner up. Find another teacher in your department or grade level and work together. Share your ideas and share the work load as you develop a blended learning unit that works for both of your classes. You will look ambitious for integrating across the curriculum.
• Good teaching is good stealing. Until your can develop everything on your own, use other teachers’ stuff. Use online lesson videos that were made by others. Find projects that have worked in other teachers’ classes. I would say this is temporary for the first three years. You know your students better than anyone else, so your own content and your own projects will always be best.
• Ask for help. There may be a technology coordinator, a curriculum director, or a resource person on campus who is in administration now but would love to work with you to make a blended learning unit. It is possible that they miss the classroom and would jump at the chance to try something new. More and more schools are hiring technology integration specialists who have great ideas and want to relieve some of the load. Perhaps there is a techie parent at the school with time and brain cells to spare. You will never know unless you ask around.

So use the internet for what it is best at: content delivery. And use class time for what it is best at: interactive projects and discussions. Blended learning does not make the teacher replaceable, it makes teachers indispensable. Because if students could get an education from the internet - or a $1.50 in late fees to the public library - I would be all out of good cocktail party conversation.

Why Orange Tic Tacs Really Improve Grades

Previously, on the Clickademics blog, I wrote about my favorite tip for studying before exams. It involves the student eating Orange Tic Tacs while studying and then again during the exam. That way the smell of the candy will remind the student of the time studying and increase recall.

 I do believe that the sense of smell is linked with memory. After posting my original article, I even had another former student comment that one of his professors cited a study that proved a similar point. However, if Orange Tic Tacs do, in fact, increase student test grades, I think it has more to do with the fact that the student believes it will work.

If I tell a student that strategically eating Orange Tic Tacs will lead to higher test grades, two other variable are at play.

1. If the student has to eat Orange Tic Tacs while studying for the trick to work, then the student has to actually sit and study. The student will probably spend more time studying for the test than if she had not been told about the trick. She has a reason to sit in front of her notes and text book and focus.
2. The student knows that I, as her teacher, believe that she can do well on the test. I think that this is the most important factor. Every student needs to know he or she can succeed, and knowing that their parents and teachers believe in them helps considerably. 

Positive attitude matters. Ask any doctor or nurse; patients that believe they can get better do get better. The mind has tremendous effect on the body. I remember when I was coaching my son’s basketball team, one of his friends was nervous because he was going to be playing against us on Saturday. I told him that if he spent ten minutes Friday night picturing himself shooting baskets, he would score more baskets in the game. Sure enough, he played great, and he later told me that he scored more than he had in any other game. If his positive outlook can improve his free-throws, doesn’t it make even more sense that my student’s positive feelings about studying would improve her recall?

My point is that students are more likely to believe that they can succeed when their teachers believe they can succeed. So whether a student does well on a test because of a candy or because she believes she can, it is vital that teachers encourage their students. Don't want a room full of candy? Lucky pencils, encouraging notes, and pre-test pep-talks also work wonders. 

Please check out our Essay Engine program that helps students write and like us on Facebook.

What Teachers Should Know About Parents

Last week, I wrote What Parents Should Know About Teachers based on my experiences in the classroom. Here is the other perspective, What Teachers Should Know About Parents, things that I have learned now that my kids are in school.

While teaching, I encountered three types of parents:

I’ll begin with the parents in the middle. Most of your students’ parents are great. They love their kids, they are happy with the school, and they want to support you as the teacher. You only need to know one thing about these parents: if their kids are happy, they’re happy. If you set their kids up for success, throw in some creative activities, and tell a joke or two, all is good.

There is a second group of parents, the ones with too little time. These folks are maxed out with work, with family, and with other commitments. Many of these parents belong to the first, happy group, but they really hope that you, the teacher, take care of the school thing since they are juggling so much. In general, you can help these parents by:

• Keeping your emails short and easy to skim on their phone. I’m an involved parent, and I read all of the teachers’ emails, but even I rarely make it to the Moodle/Blackboard/Haiku page.
• Making your homework and project instructions easy for the student to understand. These parents are grateful when their kids can knock out their homework without a lot of help.
• Avoiding projects that require trips to the craft store. You should definitely avoid the dreaded collaborative project where the kids have to get together at someone’s house – it takes forever, and they never get anything done there anyway.

The third group of parents has too much time on their hands. These folks are very involved (some might say too involved) with their child’s education. They want to know everything that is going on, and if you don’t let them know ahead of time, they will email, call, and request meetings to find out. And you know what? They have every right to know what is going on in their child’s day. More on that later.

Here are my suggestions for keeping everyone happy.

• Send out a class newsletter periodically, either by email, on paper, or both. Elementary students might need a weekly homework newsletter every Monday while older students might only need one monthly covering the big tests and projects. This will keep the busy parents happy.
• Meanwhile, put everything on your class webpage or Moodle/Blackboard/Haiku page and put links in the newsletter. Now, if a parent wants to know the agenda for the day or the instructions for a project, it is easy to find. This requires extra work at the beginning of the month, but it will save you time answering questions later.
• Make sure that the parent can check the student’s grades online and that the grades are current.

Now there is something that took me several years to learn while I was teaching; it is more important that I support a family’s parenting than it is for them to support my teaching. By that I mean it is good for parents to be intentional about the choices that they make for their children, choices about media, about time spent online, about language. If parents have chosen to raise their child without movies or television, it is not the place of the teacher to undo that by showing a movie in class or making the child write about a television show. If parents choose to shelter their children from strong language, the teacher should not undo all of that work by assigning a novel that contains those elements. For instance, Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest American novels, but some families may be uncomfortable with the language. I believe it is best if the teacher lets the parents know early. If a parent has an issue with the book, try to find a compromise – perhaps the student can read a different book. When I taught Edgar Allan Poe in my English class, a couple of parents over the years were uncomfortable with the violence. I found that the same lesson could be taught with a different piece of literature. Every American should read Huck Finn and Edgar Allan Poe at some point, in my opinion, but it does not have to happen freshman year.

And returning to my point about the overly involved parents, they should be allowed to be overly involved. I may not choose to parent that way, but you never know if the child has a special need or may forget to do homework unless that parent double and triple checks. Or maybe that parent just wants to push the kid super hard to get into Stanford. I don’t think it is going to make that kid into a happy adult, but it is not my choice as the teacher.

One last note, this time about surprises. All parents like to be pleasantly surprised, so catch each student doing something great, and let the parents know. Make a comment or send an email letting the parent know how helpful the student was in science lab or how well she did on the test. Most parents only get called when the child is in trouble or is hurt and will love to hear that you noticed their child’s strength. Conversely, all parents hate to be unpleasantly surprised. If a student has grades that are slipping or has missed an assignment, let the parent know early and often. It does take some time to analyze student data each week, but it is worth it for everyone. Some of my worst times as a teacher were spent with angry parents whose kid was doing poorly, but there was not enough time in the semester for the child to raise the grade. This can go for behavior problems too.

Realize that even though you have taught hundreds of students at this grade level, this is only the first or second time most of these parents have raised a child this age, so be patient with them.

And please check out our Clickademics Essay Engine and like us on Facebook.

The Next Big Startup Incubators? Schools

In the past, education has been one of the slowest moving industries around. If you go into a classroom today, not only will it look very similar to the classrooms you sat in as kids, but it looks pretty much the same as the classrooms your parents sat in. But things are changing. Teachers, administrators, and students are adopting new technologies that allow students to learn just as much outside of the classroom. Students are feeling the competitive pressure for college acceptances and scholarships, so parents are paying for tutors,  academic camps, and learning apps more than ever. This is why education is the a huge growth area for tech startups.

Too many of these startups, though, don't really understand education. Just because you were a student, and your learned stuff, doesn't mean you know how students learn stuff. Teachers do. And too many of these tech startups and their investors are on a short timeline, forcing them to develop quick-fix educational apps that don't make a meaningful difference for students. You know who has patience for a long-term project? Teachers do. You know who is sits on a wealth of untapped startup potential? Teachers do.

A school is the perfect place to create education technology that will make a meaningful difference for students around the world and generate a tremendous revenue stream. I first had this thought I was developing Clickademics Essay Engine, our web app that helps students write essays at home. I wished that I were still teaching in the classroom, where I would have access to resources, students, and other teachers. 

Let me back up a moment. For those who don't know, a business incubator is a place that helps startups get off the ground. They provide cheap office space, legal advice, support services, IT, and even a small amount of capital (like an angel investor or venture capitalist). All of the things that medium-sized businesses have but startups do not. In exchange, the incubator often asks for a share of the company. Now, the staff at a school may not be able to give much business advice, but they have plenty that a startup needs to get going. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of a school partnering with a tech startup. The largest hurdle is that the people in that school need to stop thinking like a school and start thinking like a VC. 

Here are the advantages:

• Schools are packed with education experts that understand their target market better than anyone. The average teacher has had hundreds of students come through her classroom so she understand the way students learn as well as the way their parents think. Oh, and many of them have masters' degrees. Teachers are the best source of ideas for new products. They regularly meet before or after school and even spend whole days on professional development, all of which are the perfect environment for brainstorming sessions.
• Schools are packed with technology. Most schools have dozens of computers, have access to web servers, and staff their own IT departments. Much of the infrastructure is in place. There are no professional developers on campus, but most high schools have computer science classes with students who code and are looking for ways to earn a little spending money or add projects to their portfolios before applying to college. If a school were to develop an education tech product, it would need to hire professional developers, but students would be able to help supplement the work cheaply.
• Schools are packed with beta-testers. Once teachers dream up an idea and a demo is built, the product can be constantly tested with their own students. It is easy to get their subjective feedback when they complain during homeroom, and the objective results of the product can be tracked through the student's class grades and standardized tests. The means of data collection and feedback are already in place and paid for.
• Schools have access to capital. Sort of. Everyone says that schools have no money, but that means different things to different people. Does a school have money to hire five new teachers permanently? No, but many schools can hire a couple of developers for a short-term project. In addition, there are grants, both small and large, just for schools, often reserved for technology purposes. Many schools also have access to fund raising events, local businesses, and concerned parents who would be very interested in donating money for a project that could both improve learning for the current students and create a future revenue stream that will help students in the future. It's like building a football field that could be acquired by a competitor at a 10x ROI. 
• Schools are good at spreading the word. Marketing a product developed in-part by a school would easy. It would get attention from the press, the parents would tell their friends, and the staff would be able to share the news at conferences, on blogs, and in teacher newsletters. Having a school behind the startup would give it instant credibility with other schools around the country.

Here are the disadvantages:

• The school culture. School administrators are used to thinking within their budget constraints and are often skeptical of profit and risk. A project like this would require leadership that is forward thinking, entrepreneurial, and willing to work hard now for results several years down the road.
• Non-profit status. All of this may not be possible in the average public school, though a small public school district hoping to distinguish itself may be interested in trying it. A private school with committed parents and donors would be the best bet, though private schools tend to have much smaller enrollment and budgets than their public school equivalents. The relationship between the non-profit school and the entrepreneurial venture would have to be set up carefully to avoid legal issues later, but I have heard from lawyer friends that it is entirely possible.
• Work. Any teacher who is motivated enough to contribute to an education startup is already overworked. The very thing that makes these teachers qualified for a project like this is what has already lead them to volunteer to coach, attend conferences, write blogs, help students after school, and read education books in addition to lesson planning and grading. How can you enlist the busiest people to work more? Do the bulk of the work during summer vacation. Cancel summer school, send the students to the school across town, and convert the school computer lab to a tech startup. 

So if your kid’s school has extra office space and a couple thousand dollars to spare, propose that they spin off an education technology company. It would be a lot better than spending that money on a bunch of iPads.

We Already Have the Platform: It's the Classroom

It is an exciting time in education technology. I see announcements for new ed-tech startups every week. Most of them have clever names, most of them have slick websites, and most of them are worthless.

And that is because most tech startups in education are platforms: they gather course material from others and deliver it to the individual or the classroom. Making platforms is easy because you write the code and wait for others to fill your library with content and wait for customers to flock to your site. The problem is that we don't need any of them because the classroom is the original platform and still the best.

Though some of these course delivery sites are great for adult learners who want to take a Stanford computer science course from home, we at Clickademics care about students K-college. These kids don't want to watch a professor online to improve their mind, they just want to pass math class. The best person to recommend educational material is the teacher who knows the student's ability and the requirements of the class. The teacher can recommend online material faster and better than any algorithm.

The other problem with online platforms is that there just isn't enough quality content. If you ever browse the course offerings of these platforms, you see the same things:

• Slideshows made ten years ago, mostly with text. It's basically a textbook in Powerpoint.
• Upper-division university courses where a professor parked a handycam in the back of the classroom.
• How-to videos that help you learn to cook or care for your parrot.

You know what is sorely lacking? Lessons on grammar, biology, history, study skills - topics that real students have to know for school. They are lacking because they are boring and incredibly hard to make - for most people. We love our work at Clickademics because we enjoy creating these lessons. After years in the classroom, we know how much students need help with core concepts, so we are energized to make content that students need.

Our first offering, Essay Engine™, teaches students expository writing, something every student needs in almost every class. It was challenging to create since every video lesson is a mini-movie, but it solves a real world problem: how can a student get help on an essay at 9:30 the night before it's due? 

So let teachers recommend online lessons. All this education startup energy should go into building great content. Of course, the people that are best at creating content that really helps students learn - teachers.

First Day of School Vol. 3 - Waste Less Time in Class

Since I left the classroom, I have created Clickademics, a website where we film great teachers giving their most helpful lessons. One of my early observations was that each lesson only takes 5-9 minutes. I have filmed many of the lessons that I have filmed myself were ones for which I had devoted a whole class period, but they still only took 5-9 minutes on film because I could carefully choose my words and include the best examples. So if the lesson only takes 10 minutes of a class, what happens during the other 30 minutes?

Too much of the class day is spent on tasks of little academic value. Quieting down the class, making announcements, collecting papers, quieting down the class, passing out papers, answering questions, and quieting down the class. Instead of making yourself do all of the work, show the students how to take care of it themselves by establishing a routine. If every student knows what to do when class starts, where to turn in papers, where to find answers, then they don't need to slow down class asking you, and you are no longer a bottle neck. But these routines have to start on day one.

I recommend that you imagine all of the tasks that happen regularly in a classroom. Then think of an efficient way to do each task and never deviate. Students should be using their problem solving on class projects, not finding the stapler. They should use their questions on clarifying the material in class, not asking when homework is due. Here are some suggestions:

1. Always have a seating chart. Always.
2. Start every class period with an activity. Post a math problem, short writing assignment, or open ended question on the board each day. When students come to class, have them all open a certain notebook and do the warm up exercise. It will get their brains ready to learn, keep them from being bored, and help start class on time. Periodically, check their notebooks and give credit for keeping up with the exercises.
3. Use mailboxes. As I wrote in an earlier post, creating cereal box mailboxes was one of the best teaching ideas I ever had. If every student has a mailbox in the classroom, you can distribute instructions, hand out announcements, and return graded work without taking any class time. Make it the students' first stop as they arrive in class so that they can pick up everything they need before class starts.
4. Have a system for handing in work. Now, this is a little trickier because your system will depend on your students. If you teach high school, then an "In" box on your desk and a digital drop box on your class website should work fine. High school students should be responsible and self-motivated enough to take care of their own work since they will need to do this in college and the workplace. I, however, taught middle school, and I often had students that skipped work. I also had students who could swear they turned in the work but later found it stuffed in their backpacks. My system - students put the day's work on the corner of their desks as they worked on their warm-up exercises. I would walk through the room and pick up each student's work. If a student did not have the work, I would give him or her a late work receipt, proof for me and a reminder for the student. I could take roll as I walked the class, too.
5. Post the week's work and all upcoming projects clearly. I posted this every Monday and required students to write it all down in a notebook. This can be done more electronically much faster and more efficiently, but students should still get used to using a calendar and To Do list since it will be a useful habit later in life.
6. Use webpages, email, and social media. Offload as much as possible to the web where students can get answers when they need them and parents can know what is happening in class. Since the mid '90s, I had a class website where I posted a homework calendar, instructions for projects, PowerPoint slideshows from my lectures, and helpful lessons. I encouraged students to email me: they could get immediate answers so that they could keep up with their work, I spent less time answering question in class, and quieter students could get equal time as the outgoing students. And since students often asked the same questions, I could copy and paste one answer and use it again. If I were in the class today, I would use a class Facebook page and Twitter to send out reminders, hints, and answers to common questions. A Google calendar that could sync with the students' own calendars could instantly replace the student's paper homework notebook.
7. Have an "Ask Two, Then Me" policy. I was surprised how many student questions were about topics we had already covered. If a student had a question, he or she should ask two neighbors before asking me. This answered most students' questions and did not require me to stop what I was doing.

If you want more hints, check out The New Teacher's Complete Sourcebook - highly rated my other users.