Diagram created in GoClass

Regardless of what curriculum areas we teach, observing and assessing our students is something that we all do every day. Thanks to mobile devices like iPads and Android tablets, recording our informal observations and formal assessments has never been easier. Here are some of the best mobile apps and mobile-friendly websites available.

Infuse Learning is a free service that allows you to create and deliver assessments on your laptop, iPad, or Android device and push individual questions, prompts, and even complete quizzes out to students’ devices in private virtual classrooms. Your questions and prompts can take on a variety of formats including multiple choice, true/false, and short answer style; it even allows students to respond by creating drawings or diagrams on their own devices. This would be especially useful, for example, in a biology class, where you could ask students to create cell diagrams on their devices and submit them to you electronically. Infuse Learning is the most universally accessible app on this list because it offers both audio support and multiple language options—the service will read your questions and prompts aloud to students, or translate them into students’ native languages.

GoClass is a free iPad application for creating short lessons and delivering them to your students. Your lessons can include annotated images, freehand sketches, text, and video. GoClass also gives teachers various tools for creating class rosters that they can use to keep track of which students are using which lessons and when. Teachers also have the option to ask questions and poll their kids, then project those student responses to the class without showing students’ names. The image (above), from GoClass, illustrates how a teacher might use the app in the classroom.

Google Documents is a great means to creating assessment forms that display properly both in Safari on iPads and on Android device browsers. I often use Google Forms to create a simple pre-learning skills assessment or prior knowledge survey for my students, using the scale option built into the interface. For example, when I facilitate Google Apps trainings, I ask participants to rank their current skills on a scale of one to five. In professional development settings, I make form responses anonymous. When I use Google Forms in classrooms with students, I require that they enter their names. Then I can mill about the classroom with my iPad, view responses as they come in, and have discussions with students on an individual basis. For directions on creating and distributing a form using Google Documents, check out my professional guide, Google Docs and Google Drive for Teachers.

For totally informal and unplanned recording of observations about my students, Evernote is my go-to app. I have Evernote installed on every device that I use on a regular basis (MacBook, iPad, Nexus 7, Windows 7 on my desktop PC) to jot down just about everything, from interesting sites that I find while browsing the Web to reminders to myself to pick up eggs at the market. The speech-to-text option in Evernote makes it exceedingly handy because you can dictate notes rather than type them; if you speak clearly, the transcription is quite good. Evernote also allows you to tag your notes—which makes it easy to search through everything in your Evernote account—and sort your notes into different notebooks. I create a notebook for each class that I teach so that I can quickly access all of my relevant notes and resources out of the thousands of notes currently in my account.

Finally, if you’re looking for a tool to record your observations of student behaviors while also creating an engaging student experience, give ClassDojo a try. ClassDojo will work on any modern Web browser on your laptop, iPad, or Android device. ClassDojo allows you to record your observations and easily share them with students and their parents.

There isn’t one single system of observation and assessment that works for every teacher, but the tools outlined above have been a hit wherever I have shown them. What’s your favorite mobile system for recording observations and assessments of your students?

’Tis the season for prizes, including the 2012 Edublog Awards. Announced yesterday, the winners and runners-up include “Best Individual Blog,” “Best Twitter Hashtag,” and “Best Individual Tweeter.”

Sponsored by blogging service Edublogs, the awards are determined by a nomination process open to the general public, and winners and runners-up are chosen by vote. The awards were started in 2004 as a response to schools, districts, and educational institutions blocking the use of social media with the intention of promoting the importance and relevancy of these sites.

SLJ’s “Cool Tools” columnist Richard Byrne garnered both “Best Ed Tech/Resource Sharing Blog” and a runner-up award for “Best Individual Blog” for his site Free Technology for Teachers, where he provides practical tips for incorporating technology into the classroom. From apps that help students keep track of homework assignments and platforms for peer tutoring, to infographics on the solar eclipse and programs providing an in-depth look at human anatomy, Byrne’s site has something for everyone.

Bibliophiles looking for a site melding tech and kid lit will appreciate John Schumacher’s (aka Mr. Schu) Watch. Connect. Read (pictured), which was runner-up in the “Best/library/librarian blog” category. Exploring the world of book trailers, Schu’s blog also features interviews with authors and illustrators, revisits Newbery and Caldecott-winning books, and recently included the highlights of a Twitter chat about the “Babymouse” and “Lunch Lady” graphic novels. “Best Library/librarian blog” winner, Educational Blog, Iliana Ilieva-Dabova shares tips and suggestions for Bulgarian teachers creating lesson plans.

For educators eager for apps but overwhelmed by the vast selection, there’s the Edublog category “Best Mobile App.”: The winner, Flying Books, is based upon William Joyce’s short film and picture book The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Atheneum, 2012), the story of a man who follows a flying book into a library where he spends years working. Runners-up included apps for Dropbox, which lets  users  share videos and images, Evernote, for storing ideas and notes, and the Night Zookeeper Drawing Torch, a game that features animals and monsters and that lets players tap into their drawing abilities.

“Best Student Blog” and “Most Influential Blog Post” went to Jaden, a student in California who blogs on subjects ranging from the past presidential election to the “Hunger Games” series at Jaden’s Awesome Blog. In “Ten things I’ve learned from blogging,” the fifth-grader shared wise words about lessons learned while creating a social media presence. Tips:  “When people are nice enough to comment on your blog, comment back so they will return to your blog,” “Don’t post pictures of yourself,” and “Add gadgets to make your blog the best it can be.”

The winner of the “Best Twitter Hashtag,” #UnfollowBullying was started by  the Elk Grove Unified School District as a way to take a stance against cyber-bullying. Best Hashtag runners-up included #comments4kids, providing ways for students and teachers to find blogs they’d like to comment on, and #slpeeps, for speech and language professionals.

@SpeechyKeenSLP won the “Best Individual Tweeter” award, while @ictmagic and @RossMannell were among the runners-up.

Making the most of Twitter was a common thread in this year’s awards. The runner-up for “Most Influential Blog Post,” “Nomenclature and basic functions of Twitter” by Lexical Linguist, for example, gives novices a “101” introduction to the social media platform, sharing pointers about hashtags, privacy issues, and how to interact with other users.

Other winners included Jamie Forshey, instructional technology coach and teacher at the Bellwood-Antis School District in Central PA, who took “Best New Blog,” for Edutech for Teachers and Tim Rylands, an experienced teacher from the UK known for his integration computer games and technology into the classroom, who won Edublog’s “Lifetime Achievement” award.