I love making lists. I am sure many of you have seen that meme about your brain feeling like an internet browser with 20 tabs open, some are frozen and music is coming from somewhere. Well that about sums up what is happening inside my head. Making lists helps me to control all of the noise happening inside my head. Most of the lists I create are reoccurring tasks that happen on a daily or weekly basis. That is why I love Google Keep. Google Keep allows me to create digital post it notes that keep my lists organized. The best part is, they are reusable!

To get started navigate to Google Keep through your web browser, or by downloading the app through the app store. Once in Keep start a new note. Give your note a title, and add the items that you would like to appear on your reoccurring task list. Once you have all of your items entered as a list click on the three dots located on the bottom of the note and select "show checkboxes." This will automatically place a checkbox next to each item you have listed. As you complete the items on your list simply click on the checkbox to mark them complete. To reuse the checklist simply click on the three dot menu. Then click "uncheck all items." This will place all of your items back into your checklist ready to use again!

Please tell me I am not alone. You are at a meeting or a professional development workshop. You receive all of these great printed resources that are important and you will need to reference again. However, when you get back to your classroom life happens and the materials are misplaced. If this sounds familiar this next tip is just for you! Using the Google Keep app you can take pictures of any printed materials (hand written notes included).

Once you have your photo of the material, create a new note in Google Keep. Then insert the image into your note by click on the image icon on the bottom of your note. From there select the image you would like to insert. Once your image is inserted into the note, click on the three dot menu and select "grab image text." This will insert all of the text within the image into a typed format directly below your image.

We all know how important feedback is for student learning and development. Unfortunately, feedback can be time consuming, and often times you find yourself repeating a lot of the same information to multiple students. Help save time while still providing quality feedback by creating a bank of comments in Google Keep. Consider creating different notes based on subject area or topic. From there you can list general comments that you find yourself leaving often on student work. That way when you are grading student work you can simply click on the Google Keep icon found in the right hand margin of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. This will pull up all of your Google Keep notes. You can then copy the direct comment that you need, paste the comment into your student's work, and make small changes so that it directly relates to assignment.