Virtual Classroom Library & A Little Bit of Everything Else!

Hey ya'll!  I've been super busy.  Well, I was actually on vacation last week.  It was S.U.P.E.R. cray-cray!  It was like the end of the year then BAM!  Time to leave for vacay.  I only had one day without work before we left out.  I've had so many great things I wanted to share with you.

First of all, All of these word are my words!  I am not being paid by money or products to say anything in this post... keep that in mind :)  Okay, so if you follow me on Instagram {you totally should:}, you have heard me make mention of this great app I discovered.  Well, I discovered it from someone else.  It's called Classroom Organizer.  It does something utterly amazing!  It lets you scan your classroom library books and store them on a database.  It then lets you input the students in your class so they (or you) can login to the app, select the student's name, whether they are checking in or out, and then scan the book.  You can also go in and look at which students haven't returned books, setup reminders to be emailed, and print overdue notices.  How awesome is that?  The best thing is that it's {FREE}!  Here's a screenshot of my work :)

Like all things, I did find a few things that I wish were better.  A major problem for me came up while scanning my books from Scholastic.  I get a ton of my books from here.  For some reason, they have their own ISBN# system that doesn't match up with the real world.  However, there is an actual true barcode in the front cover.  So that was great to learn.  BUT... sometimes... when you buy the books in sets, they will not have any type of barcode any where.  This was very saddening to me :(  So, I had to type the title in manually and when the student check them out/in they will also have to type it in manually.  I started thinking... it would be really great if you could create your own barcodes.  Well... there is an app for that :)  Unfortunately, this app is not free.  It's called Book Retriever.  It's fairly inexpensive at .99 (I think).  Here's the problem I ran into for this... they only have the app live right now.  You can not login via your computer like with the free app.  In order to print the barcodes you would need to print from the iPad.  My iPad isn't set up for that and I'm not sure if it ever will be :(  The company is in the works of developing a website but you must pay for a yearly subscription, and they haven't released how much it will be.  So.. here's my verdict, I will stick with the free one for right now.

I'm not sure if I posted my pics of my EC teacher planner... BUT I was super excited to get it in the mail!

However, I was a little disappointed that there were not more record keeping pages.  I teach several classes and now I think I'm going to have to keep up with a record book too... Boo :(  I do love it!

I also ordered a few May Books when they were having their 50% off Mother's Day Sale. They are so cute!

What cute packaging it came it!

This is so me:)

Here they are!  One is lined and the other is a nutritional tracker.  They are very cute books, but I'm glad I got them while they were on sale.  They are a bit thin to be as expensive as they are.... but totally worth it!

Lastly, here are a few pics of my sweet family from our vacation last week.

Happy Summer, Friends!