Since my last blog post I’ve found an app with which I can manage my class completely. I take attendance, record grades, assign groups using a random student generator, and make notes about class period goals all in one easy to navigate app called AndroClass. It’s available in a tablet app for $9.99 and a tablet compatible phone app for $5.

The catch? The set up takes some time, patience, and willingness to play around with the interface. I was up to the challenge one afternoon and set the whole thing up in just a few hours. As long as you follow the well-explained format, you can import an entire class from a .csv file. You can include the students’ ID numbers, birthdays, special needs, etc. all at once. This is a major plus. Manually entering each student would be exhausting, but I simply downloaded a .csv file from my university’s course management website, made some adjustments to fit the program’s requirements, and voila! I had my class ready to go.

I spent the beginning of a class period playing photo booth so I could have each of my students’ photos attached to their names in AndroClass. Now I can quiz myself on my students’ names and take attendance without yelling names and interrupting their work time. This is the quickest that I’ve learned a class’s names. Now when students come in for conferences early in the semester I will be able to pull up an overview of their progress with out asking “And what’s your name again?”

The very best thing about this app is its developer. German developer Andreas Schilling and I have exchanged quite a few emails with my ill-informed questions. He responds very quickly with thorough and helpful answers. For a developer who has to answer questions in multiple languages from frantic instructors worldwide, I am very impressed. This is top-rate customer service.