Drafts - A powerful tool for the iPad

I am constantly trying to improve myself as an administrator.  One of the tools that is helping me achieve this is my iPad.  There are several apps for the iPad that I have started to use that truly does make my job easier.  The most powerful app that I have started to use recently is an app called Drafts.  When you first open drafts it doesn't look like much, but once you start to use it you will see how it makes many of your day to day tasks easier.  I use this app to document meetings I have with students, parent phone calls, and ARD meetings to name a few.  It is very helpful with tasks that you do over and over again by allowing you to create templates that can be filled out with a few key strokes rather than retyping complete e-mails.  For example, whenever I assign a child ISS I have a template that I have created with Drafts that allows me to quickly communicate with the office about who the child is and how long they will be serving.  All of this documentation and communication is accomplished through Drafts being linked to e-mails addresses, Evernote and Dropbox (for documentation), as well as Google Drive Actions and specific URL actions.

Let me give you a very specific application that I have just recently learned to use.  At my school I am responsible for all of the Speech ARDs.  I like to take my own personal minutes during the ARDs and found myself retyping the same things over and over again at each ARD meeting.  It was so time consuming recreating this document at each meeting.  I decided to use Text Expander and Drafts to help me with this time waster.  In Text Expander I created the document, giving it the simple title of aard.  I linked this document with Drafts and in Drafts simply typed in aard on the main screen and hit return.  Presto, the document came up and all I had to do was fill in the specific details that had to do with that ARD meeting.  The date, time, permanent participants and outline of the form popped up.  Then I linked this form in Drafts with the specific ARD folder I had already created in Evernote.  Once the ARD meeting was complete all I had to do was choose the particular destination that I wanted the meeting minutes to go to and off it went to that location.  

I encourage you to check out Drafts.  It is a powerful tool that can be used for many different tasks that administrators and teachers alike need to do each and every day.  Thanks needs to go out to Justin Baeder at the Principal Center for bringing this tool to my attention.  Check out his on-line professional development for administrators and teachers at Principalcenter.com.  You will not be disappointed.