Teachers Planners? Tricky. There is considerable variation, though not much debate, about what a teacher carries around in his or her briefcase. Many teacher's clutch a teacher's planner. Many good teachers swear by them, so I would be foolish to dismiss them entirely. However, I will be recommending a different tool. Bound, hard back A4 notebooks are available at most discount stores for just over a pound.
Do not purchase or use any of these time-wasters:
paper clips: anything that might allow two married bits of paper to be separated, or to accidentally join together two incompatible pages, needs to be avoided.
paper pins: anything that is fiddly to attach is a no-no
A4 plastic wallets or envelopes: anything that you need to wrestle with in order to get at a piece of paper is not a good idea
Ring binders, or anything that you must twiddle around with to get to work correctly.
treasury tags are mandatory for some examination materials, but you should avoid them like the plague in your own work; they inevitably mean that you need a hole punch, and those polo-shaped hole-strengtheners. Way too complicated.
And, of course technology. When it comes to tools, TM4T assumes a near-worst-case scenario. we are going to assume that you cannot use any of the hand-held electronic devices which are so helpful to busy managers in business. TM4T assumes that you are using nothing more sophisticated than a pen and an A4 notebook. You can use a pencil if you like. TM4T does, though, assume that you have access to a desktop or laptop computer, with standard Office software, a connection to the Web, and a memory stick (USB flash drive). That's all.