Summer Time Savers: 4 Fast Ways to Tackle Tedious Teaching Tasks

For many of us, summer is the time when we have dreams of sitting poolside and reading trashy novels, allowing our brains to reset after another full year of delivering lessons, helping students with their homework, making sure we complete all the testing required by our districts, volunteering on steering committees, and basically anything else that comes our way. Yes, summer is a great time to recharge the batteries, but we all know it doesn’t last forever.

In the back of our minds there are always little tasks to take care of: Rerecording a video that didn’t work last year, converting some old PDFs to editable documents, trying to get a sound clip out of a podcast for your students to listen to. These are all what fall into the category of “little-tasks-that-seem-easy-but-ohmygoodness-how-long-will-this-take-me??” We’ve all been there.

Many of these kinds of tasks feel gargantuan. I’ve had teachers tell me they thought they needed to learn professional audio programs just to split an MP3 into two parts, and don’t even get me started on the terrors of Adobe Acrobat. The truth is, though, that the majority of these quick tasks actually do have simple and free tools and apps that can get you through the basics, letting you get back to the important work of half-sleeping on the lounge chair while guessing at whodunnit in the cozy mystery you picked up from the Little Free Library.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the tools that can help you zip through the little tasks:

1. PDF Converters

As teachers, PDFs are everywhere in our lives. Sure, they’re great for reading, but as soon as we need to do anything with them, they become the stuff of nightmares. From rearranging the page order to converting them to Word documents so we can edit sections to use in class, there are always things that we want to do, but pretty much throw our hands up as soon as we start. There are a number of PDF “quick action” tools available, but my favorite is still PDF Candy. PDF candy makes it super easy to delete pages, split the pages up and create smaller documents, convert photos into PDFs, sign documents, and pretty much anything else you normally think “this should only take a minute” about and somehow ends up taking you an hour. It’s so easy you can finish your task while blending your refill slushy lemonade.

2. Record Your Voice

For a lot of us, it’s still shocking how hard it is to make a quick and simple audio recording. But don’t worry, you don’t need to master GarageBand or figure out Audacity just for a quick audio clip. If all you need is to create a short mp3 of yourself speaking, try online-voice-recorder.com. It’s a simple single click of a button to get started and a quick drag of the edges to trim the beginning or end of your recording as needed. Then just click “save” and you’ve got an mp3 on your desktop to use as you need. (I actually have used this by the pool, and it’s marvelous.)

3. Other Audio Needs

If you need to do a little more than trim the edges or if you have an audio file you’d like to make some simple adjustments to, the same company that makes Online Voice Recorder has a whole suite of single-action services available at 123apps.com. There are options to make quick changes to your audio, like changing the volume or speed (great for slowing things down for students to break down pronunciation or blending sounds), and even a way to join multiple audio clips together. This is a great way to add your own context to a news clip or follow up with questions for students to consider at the end of a short podcast.

4. Making a Quick Video

A lot of teachers think you have to get fancy and professional when making a video, but these days, even major corporations are spending big money to make their commercials look like they’re shot on a phone. Of course, you don’t need to fake recording on a phone, you can just open your phone and start recording. At the very easiest level, you can simply use the camera function to record and then upload for your students. Don’t worry about the “ums” and the “ahs” as this is part of the authentic recording that actually helps students better connect with you. If you’re willing to add a little time to the learning curve (but time that’s also still fun and work that’s definitely doable while someone else is grilling burgers for you), you can download an app like CapCut that will allow you to throw subtitles/captions on your video. If you’re on an iPhone, Apple’s Clips is free and automatically adds the subtitles for you.

None of us want to fill our summers with the small responsibilities, but we also know that taking care of them when they’re fresh on our minds will make things infinitely easier down the line. With just a little imagination and a few easy-to-access tools, you can drop the anxiety that comes with knowing you’ve got a few tedious tasks ahead of you — and just get ‘em done!