App of the Day: Confer (iOS)

By far one of my favorite new apps is Confer. This app is made by David Lowe, a teacher, who wanted to design an application for taking monitoring notes during class. Monitoring notes are very important to you as a teacher because it allows you to write down (and then later remember) important strengths and next steps of your students.

Confer is available for both the iPad and iPod/Phone and both versions are easy to use and manage.

With new features you can easily import rosters from Infinite Campus via *.txt files and backup all your notes using Google Docs or your email. Whenever you assign a strength or next step to a student, Confer will remember your note, and allow you to easily assign that same note to other individual students or groups of students. Later at the end of the day when you want to plan your small groups you can go back and Confer will sort your students into groups based on the strengths and next steps you gave to students. The application runs $14.99 in the app store, which is on the higher side of application pricing, but is well worth every penny.

Confer is a must have for any teacher who uses an iPad and wants to spend more time interacting with their students and less time writing down notes. You can download Confer here.