A major part of teachers’ work involves imparting lessons and instructions to the students in a classroom, but it just does not ends here. Apart from their normal teaching activities, they need to perform a variety of tasks like taking attendance, making assignments, providing homework and assessing students’ performance. They also have to communicate with students and their parents, collaborate with fellow teachers, conceive learning exercises and manage projects. Trying to perform various teaching, administrative and other kinds of tasks within limited time and resources, turns out to be a big challenge for them. This can sap their energy as well as drain their valuable time. Nowadays increased emphasis is being put on teaching things in an informative and engaging manner, so that pupil participation increases. For achieving this, teachers need to innovate, be creative and put some extra effort for developing new and engaging forms of learning. They hardly have any time to perform such activities on account of their busy schedule. These can weigh heavily in their mind. It can potentially affect the quality of teaching imparted to students.

Teachers would like to avoid such situations. But, they need solutions for achieving the same. Solutions which enable them to properly, conveniently manage their tasks, projects and track their progress. So teachers will be relieved from undue stress and will enjoy their work more.

Web based project management solutions offer teachers a lot of benefits, so they can perform their tasks in a planned, scheduled and streamlined manner. With the help of these tools, they can indulge in clear communication and collaborate rapidly with their students, fellow teachers, support staff, administrators and others. They are also able to develop skills in creative thinking and speedily resolve their disputes. Deadline-driven teamwork can be achieved through these solutions.Teachers are able to document the time spent in performing their respective tasks. They can better manage and implement their projects with improved organization to get the desired outcomes. Consequently the quality of their teaching would get boosted.

By using the below stated web based project management systems, teaching related tasks and projects can be deftly managed. This in turn will improve the performance and productivity of teachers.

1. Google Drive

Google Drive is a must have tool for educators. This file storage and synchronization solution offers them various benefits.Teachers and students can write collaboratively and edit documents with it. Its document scanner feature for its Android app lets teachers snap a picture of any classroom document. It gets uploaded as a PDF format file to their Google Drive. It then goes through an optical character recognition process, so they can find it through keywords. Teachers can digitally collect homework done by students and provide feedback on it even when students are still working on the original document. Revision history of documents written in the Drive can be viewed. Old versions of documents can be accessed. Educators are able to back up their local files to the cloud and view them online. Teachers can send large files like videos and multimedia as attachments to students or parents. Though Google Drive productivity suite contains many built-in apps, it also lets educators install third-party apps to their Google Drive. These apps include photo and video editors, PDF annotators, diagramming tools, math visualizers, note-taking programs and others. As an example, a teacher can scan workof a student to Google Drive and use a third-party annotator in the Drive to mark up work-related papers online. Teacherscan archive everything useful like webpages and images they come across, on the internet, to their Drive. Due to its cloud based nature, they are able to access their clipped images and pages from any computer or device. This helps them when they are developing the same material on multiple computers. Students can also use this capability for carrying out researchwork both at their school and home. Same files and same information can be viewed from any of the computer.

2. Skype

This application facilitates learning and teaching. Teachers are able to hold class room sessions with their distantly located students through Skype video conferencing tool. Its screen-sharing ability enables students to view a portion or all of a teacher’s computer screen as a streaming video. Teachers can collaborate, share knowledge with each other and discuss over learning related matters. They are able to watch and share conference presentations. A teacher can send homework and resources to students through Skype. Teachers can provide more help to students requiring extra attention students after the school hours. They are able to share classroom work done by students with their parents. They can interact with parents of students when meeting with them in person is not possible. Students afflicted with disabilities who are unable to attend classes can be taught via Skype. A class is able to connect and collaborate with other class or classes. Students can indulge in peer teaching. They can collaborate on classroom projects and assignments through video calls. This tool is also used for teaching various international languages and for improving linguistic skills of native speakers of a language.Teachers can invite guest speakers like authors, teachers, students and others who can communicate directly with students through video conferencing and share with them new ideas.

3. Dropbox

Dropbox has proved its utility in the field of education. This online storage system is used for storing and syncing files across computers, tablets, and smartphones. As an example, teachers can create a lecture or lesson plan in a home computer, put it in the Dropbox folder and it gets synced with the work computer at school. They can open this file, make a few changes to it and these changes get synced to their home computer. This solution is seamless and fast. It can also be employed as a learning tool. A sharing folder created by educators, can be shared with students of a class after inviting them to join Dropbox. Educators can put PowerPoints, homework assignments, handouts and other educational material into this folder. Students are able to add their homework and files to this folder as well as download its content. Homework submitted by students gets time-stamped. Dropbox folders can be shared among students, enabling them to collaborate on assignments. This tool is actively used for managing projects and presentations of students. Many popular education apps like Ghostwriter Notes and Notability come with Dropbox integration.  

4. Evernote    

This solution is of great help in carrying out teaching work. Teachers can easily capture notes with Evernote, a note taking application. They are able to add notes from text, images or audio and organize them into online files called notebooks.Teachers can collaborate on projects with their students and other teachers and organize lesson plans. They can take time stamped snapshots of whiteboard before and after a class, so they are clear about  what they are working on. Educators can capture feedback with Evernote after a class ends. They are able to organize their classes on a week-to-week or a class-by-class basis through tags. Standards of achievements for a specific grade or class can be compiled by teachersthrough standards database and shared with other teachers and parents. They can keep their resources and new ideas in Evernote. Classroom templates can be used by them for grading and assessing their students, saving their time. Whateverteachers add to their respective account, gets automatically synced and becomes available on all the devices like computers, tablets and phones at their home or school. They can search and access it from anywhere. By using this tool, they need to spend less time on lesson planning, research and assessing students. They are able to devote more time to instructing and guiding the students.  With its Web Clipper, teachers can search interesting lesson ideas, webpages, images online and clip them to their Evernote account for later reference. Through tags, they can search in their account resources captured by them. Multiple teachers can collaborate on the same note or notebook and develop great lessons and ideas. They can even digitise handwritten notes taken in the classroom. They are able to annotate and markup images with text, arrows and sketches. They can edit a student’s writing by marking up. Lists can be kept directly in Evernote.

5. ProofHub

This online project management software enables proper management and systematic execution of teaching related projects. It significantly improves communication, collaboration among teachers, students and others involved in these projects. It lets teachers discuss with each other over project matters. This tool offers various beneficial features like notes, to-do lists, Gantt charts, reports, proofing tool, files besides others. With its notes, teachers can share, explore ideas and collaborate over writing. So that  they can develop rich content related to learning. To-do lists enables a teacher to assign a group of students various tasks. It imparts them clarity over their tasks and their schedule. Its Gantt charts are used for tracking the progress made by students at their tasks. With its reports, teachers are able to gain a true understanding of their learning projects and know the amount of complete, incomplete and in progress work. Reports provides summarized information of projects through a combination of text, charts and tables. Its proofing tool enables teachers to review designs created by students as a part of their assignments. So they are able to know what is lacking in students’ designs and correct them accordingly. Calendar can be used by teachers to schedule and conduct meetings, events involving fellow teachers, students and others. This solution allows them to share files and documents. It is integrated with Google Docs and Dropbox for convenient file access. Instead of using three different tools; Google Drive, Dropbox and Evernote for creating file folders, docs and notes, teachers can use all these features within ProofHub itself.

6. Basecamp

Basecamp, a web based project management tool keeps together projects related discussions, due dates, to-do lists and calendar at one place. Teachers can collaborate on teaching centric projects, outlines and activities. They are able to discuss how their teaching work went during a specific time period. They can reference an archived project, see and review its past activities. This enables them to better plan the upcoming teaching session. A teacher can divide a class into groups. Students in a specific group are able to collaborate on their group’s project through Basecamp. Students can assign tasks to each other. A teacher can measure students’ progress without interfering in their work. Even parents can view the workbeing done by their wards. Teachers can plan and document meetings, conferences, tours, social events and other things. Even sports activities and practice sessions can be planned, conducted and reviewed with Basecamp.  

7. Smartsheet

Simple task lists to complex processes can be flexibly managed with Smartsheet project management solution. It allows attaching files, viewing Gantt charts, automating workflows and setting of alerts. Teachers can collaborate for planning school curriculum with Smartsheet and teach their students various skills. Students in a class can work together on group projects and can discuss, collaborate over matters. They are able to  construct and view the schedule of their tasks through Gantt charts. Besides, they can also access the timeline of a project, add comments and attach files to task rows. They can complete their tasks and track efforts made by them. Teachers can also maintain records of students, assess their progress and create grade reports. With this tool, teachers can plan projects, define tasks and get projects executed.    

8. Redmine

Redmine is open source project management web application which enables streamlined project management. It improves communication in projects. With its multiple projects support feature, teachers and students can collaborate on multiple projects at once and these can be smoothly implemented. This tool offers various useful features like forums, wiki, news, documents and file management, issue tracking, time tracking, calendar, gantt charts and others. A project’s wiki is used for sharing information. Teachers can use this for providing examples to students. It also offers flexible role based access control. So a teacher is able to define appropriate roles for various teams involved in a learning project. So students of a specific team can be assigned different or same permissions as per requirement. A teacher can monitor projects, make corrections and provide feedback on tasks performed by students.  Teachers can clearly track status of various teams and guide them accordingly. With its flexible issue tracking system, various teams can be granted same permissions for opening, processing and closing issues in a project. On a more advanced level, specific teams like development team, testing team and others can be granted different permissions as per their workflow.

By using these project management tools, teachers can properly manage their teaching and learning related projects and tasks. They are able to teach students in an interesting, informative and collaborative manner. This leads to increased student participation in the learning process. In this way quality of learning will get significantly enhanced.