The COVID-19 epidemic has significantly altered the global sector. Every aspect of people’s daily lives went digital in 2020, with no exception in education. The development of online learning platforms is accelerating the digitization of education even more. Many teachers were looking for the best tips to get organized digitally, starting from that pandemic year.
For better or worse, the classroom will seem very different after the coronavirus has stopped affecting our daily lives. Being a teacher nowadays means tons of digital teaching materials to handle. It would be almost impossible for a teacher without digital materials. Imagine how many books to buy and how much space to provide when teachers must have physical books for their teaching materials.
The cost will be multiple times higher as well. Thanks to digital materials that make material preparation for the students way more practical.
The digital materials are usually in PDF format. They can be in the form of printable worksheets, eBooks, or downloadable reading resources. Some are free, whereas others require teachers to purchase through memberships or by buying the study package.
PDF format helps teachers nowadays because it is easy to manage. So, a proper tool or application to manage and edit a PDF is a must. A PDF editor is just one of the tools that teachers nowadays should have and master.
Many teaching materials served by the curriculum and material websites are in the form of PDFs. However, even though PDFs are made to preserve the document’s original format, teachers should know that PDF is editable. An editable PDF means they can easily add stickers to mark important notes, give highlights to any crucial information in the PDF materials, or even put drawings in it. The Internet provides many tools to edit a PDF online or offline.
They can edit PDFs for free, although a paid PDF editor is also available. Both free and paid PDF editors can be used as needed. The online one can be used through the web, while the offline one, through an application installation.
What can an online PDF editor do? A suitable online PDF editor should be able to edit PDF files fast. It should allow users to easily add text, sticky notes, highlights, drawings, and more to PDF files. As it is online, comments also can be given. It can be done using an online PDF editor in any web browser, like Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, or Firefox.
Adobe, the first company to introduce PDF, provides online and offline features. Here are the simple steps to edit the PDF files online:
1. Select a PDF file to edit, then drag and drop the files to the box available.
2. After the file is uploaded, sign in to add comments.
3. Choose to add text, sticky notes, highlights, drawings, and more as desired.
4. Download the file. To share the file, teachers should get a link.
Getting started with digital teaching materials is easy, but organizing and storing them may become problematic when teachers procrastinate. Ironically, teachers’ digital libraries must be full of worksheets for every subject, e-books for the teaching materials, countless question papers, answer sheets, syllabuses, lesson plans, etc. The more they procrastinate, the more files to manage are laid up on the PC.
Tips for Organizing Digital Teaching Materials for teachers:
1. Create a Master Folder
Sort the digital teaching material based on the grade or level. Create a master folder on the computer and name it based on the class or level the teachers teach. Then add all the digital homeschool material for that class or level to that master folder. Having a master folder of all the digital teaching materials used each year will shorten the time in case the teachers want to reuse it later.
2. Set Up Lesson Folders for each Master Folder
After creating a master folder based on the grade or level, teachers must make sub-folders, namely lesson folders. It also helps them quickly find the subjects they are looking for on busy teaching days.
3. Create Topic Folders in the Lesson Folder
Once they have made lesson sub-folders, create additional subfolders within each folder based on the topics. For example, they can include topics like Animals, Plants, and Science Experiments inside the Science folder or multiplication, additions, and shapes inside the Math topic.
4. Make a “To Be Printed” Folder
It will be overwhelming when teachers have to prepare the materials daily. Therefore, it is best to schedule a weekly preparation. Create a ‘To Be Printed’ folder and make weekly subfolders. The teachers must know what subjects and topics to give each week. It will save a lot of energy because they have prepared everything beforehand.
Teachers can also put the modified or edited PDF files in this folder–and keep the original resources in the lesson or topic folders. Follow the steps to edit a PDF online with Adobe safely:
Go to Adobe PDF editor here.
If teachers need to edit PDF files with more advanced features, Adobe Acrobat Pro provides a 7-days free trial. Adobe Acrobat Pro provides these features:
– Edit a PDF file, including fixing a typo, changing the text, or even adding new content.
– Move the images, rotate them, flip them, or add images in JPG, PNG, and other formats
– Add numbered or bulleted list.
– Add page numbers on the PDF files; give watermarks when it is needed.
This PDF editor will help parents to edit a PDF material/ worksheet given to their kids based on their preferences before printing it.
5. Backup the Resources
It is just a reminder, as the computer used to save all the digital materials may not last forever. Of course, teachers won’t have their stockpile of teaching materials lost just because of some computer-related snafu.
Add a backup reminder of the digital homeschool material every few months. Whether the original storage location is a flash drive or the My Documents folder of the PC, be sure to back up all the digital material regularly.
6. Do It Now
Don’t let the downloaded files of the digital materials stay too long in the downloaded folder. The more extended teachers delay organizing the materials, the bigger the risk of forgetting what files have been downloaded. Finding the files needed in the teaching process would be more difficult. Remember to rename the files that have been downloaded with a name that is easy to be identified.
Those tips may seem like teachers have much work to do, but it would be worth trying. Having hundreds of digital files to organize is not easy, but it will be much easier rather than not doing it. Teachers will find many benefits, as finding the files they want is just as easy as snapping their fingers.
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