It is not uncommon for a teacher, to encounter challenges with lesson planning, grading, or even communicating with parents more than normal. I will explain how Teacherease.com assists in alleviating the burden of everyday responsibilities. In this article, I will take you step by step through everything concerning the gradebook, the lesson planning, and how to effectively communicate with parents, as well as other strategies you will employ in the use of Teacherease. You will also find out how to include outside sources and teach together with others.
Besides, some disadvantages of the platform will be discussed and substitutes will be recommended to meet your requirements. We will examine the cases and see how Teacherease can prove to be beneficial in light of streamlining and bettering the overall experience of teaching.
What is Teacherease.com?
To start with, it is relevant to consider what Teacherease.com is and its role in classroom management. Teacherease is a web-based instructional management system that provides solutions to teachers, students, and parents. It provides grading tools, attendance, and lesson organizers, as well as student achievement monitors.
By improving communication and facilitating rapid response, Teacherease assists schools in enhancing operational performance and nurtures an interactive teaching and learning culture.
Features of Teacherease
Let what’s next be interesting and specifically address the basic Teacherease features that are valuable for teachers. So let’s get a step closer to the most significant offerings of the platform:
- Gradebook: It has made grading easier with a computer-friendly interface as well as standards-based grading.
- Attendance Tracking: Since there are records, it has made it easy to manage attendance with the help of technology.
- Lesson Planning: It gives a chance to lesson planning in a structured way that can also be shared.
- Communication: The parents and the students can be contacted in a very easy way which makes interaction seamless.
- Performance Reports: Helps to monitor students’ performance and various aspects of their growth through detailed statistics on the performance of the students.
- Customization: It has features that help to address different approaches to teaching methods in managing the classroom.
- Paperless Workflow: With e-learning, Teachers and students do not have to waste time on paperwork and most of the administrative work is cut out with the provision of digital submission.
Robust work processes design work helps the teachers with time management saying blocked hours can be utilized on things that actually matter improving a student’s learning experience.
How Teachers Can Use Teacherease?
Having acknowledged these advantages as the most critical aspects of Teacherease, let’s discuss the steps you need to follow in order to properly integrate Teacherease into normal academic activity;
1. Getting Started with Teacherease
First and foremost, when you click on Teacherease.com you will be required to either create an account or log in if you have one. Once you log in, a dashboard will be displayed which is your center for the planning of lessons, grading, and communication.
2. Using Teacherease for Lesson Planning
You can begin creating lesson plans by going to the “Curriculum” or “Lesson Plans” tabs that appear on the dashboard. After that, you will see a button “New Lesson Plan”. By clicking that button, you can type in details including the lesson title, subject, and grade level. Other things that you can include are the objectives, materials, and instructional steps. Do you need to have external resources attached? Yes, you can attach resources such as Teachers Pay Teachers, and share or save the plans effectively with your colleagues, parents, or students.
3. Grading Students in Teacherease
There is also the aspect of grading and Teacherease takes it to the next level. All that one has to do is click on the “Gradebook” tab on the dashboard to get the grading tools. One can record marks for assignments, quizzes, and tests, and Teacherease automatically prepares progress reports and report cards with the grades inputted. There is also the option of grading scales which you can modify depending on what your school adopts.
4. Communicating with Parents
Interfacing with parents is also made easy, Teacherease makes it possible. You can email parents using the Communication tab or send them messages directly. It is also possible to talk about the achievements of students as well as progress and updates as the parent portal allows that to be done seamlessly without limiting time.
5. Collaborating with Other Teachers
Your colleagues all use Teacherease which allows for easier sharing of lesson plans or even grading tasks. This enables collaboration among staff which is important in schools that advocate for collaboration in teaching.
6. Integrating Teachers Pay Teachers Resources
For teachers already utilizing Teachers Pay Teachers resources, Teacherease permits embedding or linking such materials to lesson plans making it easier to incorporate resources into the curriculum.
How Teachers Can Earn Money from Teacherease?
Although it’s not a direct income-generating model for teachers, Teacherease can be used in combination with Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT), as it is a marketplace where some resources can be sold. Educators can make their own lesson plans and materials on Teacherease, then turn them into mp3 files and sell them through TpT, thus using Teacherease for lessons and getting an additional income.
To earn from Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) while providing services on Teacherease, do the following:
Create a Teachers Pay Teachers Account: Go to
- Sign Up for TpT: Visit TeachersPayTeachers.com, click Join, and create an account as a seller.
- Set Up Your TpT Store: Establish a store that needs to have a specific name, a picture of the profile, and a detailed description. Make your store look attractive to potential customers.
- Use Teacherease to Create Resources: Teacherease should be made for classroom management, lesson planning, and student work tracking. Provide thorough lesson plans, worksheets, and activities that you can convert into TpT products later.
- Upload Products to TpT: Change your Teacherease resources to PDF or PowerPoint formats and upload them to TpT. Provide prices fill in descriptors and preview images.
- Promote Your TpT Store: Network with educators and share your store on social media sites to get more exposure for your store and products.
- Receive Payments: Go to “Account Settings” and link your PayPal or bank account. You can receive payments whenever you want in the Payments section.
- Track Your Sales: In the Sales section, pay attention to the items that bring the most sales and income across your account.
In this way, you can earn effortlessly while still working on Teacherease.
Drawbacks of Teacherease.com
Despite the many advantages of Teacherease.com for the hints, a few negative aspects can also be noted:
- Limited Customization: The platform may not give enough room for some teachers who might want customization of reports, gradebooks and the likes. This could result in a rather less pleasant engaging experience.
- Interface Complexity: To those who are using the application for the first time, or those not comfortable with technology, the interface may seem quite complex when they are in fact getting started. The design can take time to get used to and certain tools can take a lot of looking around before being found.
- Lack of Integration: It is also entirely plausible that Teacherease does not fit within the already established fringe tools or educational systems that teachers use already. Synchronizing systems may pose additional problems in trying to use the different databases.
- Technical Issues: Some users complain that from time to time, the application does not perform as well as it should and the operations are delayed and so are the responses. Given the tasks such as awarding grades or sending messages to parents, this can be very disappointing.
- Pricing: This is not entirely free and having looked at the range of features available on the free version, a reasonable assumption would be that few teachers or schools will be able to pay the charges for the advanced features.
- Limited Reporting Features: Teachers will most likely consider the reporting features and functionalities as somewhat impoverished and substandard compared to more focused and sophisticated applications. This may further obfuscate any efforts to interrogate student performance measures in granular detail.
- Support and Training: Some of the teachers may require some time to acclimatize themselves with the platform, and at times customer support doesn’t provide the needed assistance.
Alternatives to Teacherease
In case you feel that Teacherease does not meet your classroom requirements, you may consider some other products. Google Classroom, ClassDojo, and Edmodo are free and easy to use, whereas Schoology and Canvas can be characterized as complete learning management systems. As far as gamification is concerned, Kahoot! is a popular tool for making the learning process more enjoyable for students.
Conclusion
In the end, Teacherease.com is a useful website that can help the teacher prepare lessons, grade, and organize parents’ communication. Nevertheless, there are also other weaknesses of the platform such as poor branding customization, random additional features, etc. But most importantly, it is about the possibilities it offers to the teachers who want to optimize their working processes. If Teacherease does not resolve all the issues, alternatives such as Google Classroom or ClassDojo provide a set of features that provide better flexibility to a teacher’s style of teaching.