App-Garden Blog

Your best source for school administration efficiency content. 

Filter by Solution

Practice Thankfulness

Practice Thankfulness

Any time during the year is a good time to thank your volunteers! Volunteers are helping organizations achieve their mission and provide much-needed assistance to the organizations served. More Americans than ever are volunteering, according

read more
Working From Home with Kids

Working From Home with Kids

The current global situation has pushed many workers into the uncharted territory of working from home. Whether this was a request from an employer, state-mandated order, or due to a child remote learning from home, working from home can be

read more
2020 New Year's Resolution: A Year of Helping Others

2020 New Year's Resolution: A Year of Helping Others

With the holidays comes the spirit of giving. All around the world people will volunteer their time to help those in need from cooking at their local soup kitchen, packing boxes for Toys for Tots, working with local churches or organizations

read more
Falling In Love With The Virtual Online Substitute Training Application | software for school administrators

Falling In Love With The Virtual Online Substitute Training Application | software for school administrators

The Virtual Substitute Training Application is an online substitute training program that allows you to quickly and efficiently train your substitute teachers. Here are just a few ways that the Virtual Substitute Training Application can help you

read more
Goodbye Summer, Hello New School Year!

Goodbye Summer, Hello New School Year!

Simple Tips for Starting off a Great New School Year Every teacher experiences the same dilemma each year, “How am I going to make this new school year great?”. It’s been said a thousand times before but how will you turn those words in to

read more

Falling in Love With Travel Tracker Field Trip Software

The Travel Tracker is a cloud based field trip software that allows you to quickly and efficiently manage your travel request process. Here are just a few ways that the Travel Tracker Application can help you and your district!

read more
Encouraging the Younger Generation to Volunteer

Encouraging the Younger Generation to Volunteer

Many school districts focus on attracting volunteers from older generations, presumably because these individuals are usually retired. However, dismissing younger generations as potential volunteers may mean missed opportunities to increase

read more
App-Garden Opens Its Virtual Sub Training to the Public; No Longer Only for School Districts

App-Garden Opens Its Virtual Sub Training to the Public; No Longer Only for School Districts

App-Garden’s Virtual Sub Training has revolutionized the way school districts onboard and trains substitutes. The convenience and ease of completing Substitute Orientation and Effective Substitute Training allow districts and administrators

read more
Substitute Shortage in the U.S. and how training can help decrease it

Substitute Shortage in the U.S. and how training can help decrease it

Chances are if you’re working in K12 education, you’re already aware of the current substitute teacher shortage, but are you familiar with the why behind the shortage? And, more importantly, are you aware of proactive ways to prevent a

read more
App-Garden Adds Its Second Cloud-Based Solution in 30 Days - Travel Tracker - Routing Software

App-Garden Adds Its Second Cloud-Based Solution in 30 Days - Travel Tracker - Routing Software

Continuing its portfolio expansion, the App-Garden has added a powerful new product to its cloud-based solutions for K12 administrators: Travel Tracker for Routes. With Travel Tracker for Routes, administrators can easily plan, coordinate,

read more
Benefits Technology Brought to the Classroom

Benefits Technology Brought to the Classroom

There are ongoing debates about the impact of technology on today’s children. With adamant advocates on both sides, it is difficult to discern whether technology has a negative or positive influence on education and the classroom.

read more
Don’t Leave the Bill on the Table - Know Who’s Paying Before You Go

Don’t Leave the Bill on the Table - Know Who’s Paying Before You Go

Ask any teacher, administrator, or district manager and they will inevitably agree school trips cost money and can be a hassle. Often times, after a trip, teachers and schools are left scrambling to process invoices. Of course, App-Garden’s

read more
Well-Trained Substitutes Mean Higher Expectations and Quality - Substitute Teacher Training

Well-Trained Substitutes Mean Higher Expectations and Quality - Substitute Teacher Training

Think back to a day when you arrived at school to find your usual teacher was out sick and a substitute was present instead. What was your initial reaction? How did you view the substitute? Many students, then and now, view substitute

read more
Consistency is Key in Substitute Training

Consistency is Key in Substitute Training

Consistency is key, or so the saying goes, but what is at the heart of this quip? Is consistency really the key, and if so, how does consistency contribute to substitute training? Research shows, in multiple disciplines and industries,

read more
Four Reasons Tracking Volunteer Time = Value

Four Reasons Tracking Volunteer Time = Value

Allocating already stretched school resources to calculate volunteer time is often a low priority. However, volunteer time, although unpaid, is a valuable metric to have, and leverage. Here, at App-Garden, we have identified four of the top

read more
Importance of Substitute Teachers Receiving Training

Importance of Substitute Teachers Receiving Training

With students being led by substitute teachers for 5-8% of the year, quality substitute teacher training is essential to preserving the learning environment for students. (Stapczuk, 1994). Gone are the days when substitutes were babysitters

read more
Untapped Volunteer Pools: Where To Find Volunteers in a Dual-Income Society

Untapped Volunteer Pools: Where To Find Volunteers in a Dual-Income Society

Even as early as 1993, the rise of dual-income households was correlated with the decline of volunteerism in local school districts. The initial studies focused primarily on the lack of working-aged women volunteering due to increased

read more
Field Trips Made Easy: App-Garden’s Travel Tracker Reduces Paperwork, Headaches, and Stress

Field Trips Made Easy: App-Garden’s Travel Tracker Reduces Paperwork, Headaches, and Stress

A quick, cursory Google search about the decline of field trips in today’s education system will return results pointing the blame in a number of directions. Two of these being the excessive paperwork involved and lack of extra time to devote

read more
5 Ways Field Trips Benefit Your Students

5 Ways Field Trips Benefit Your Students

Field trips offer students the opportunity to apply classroom instruction in a real-world, firsthand environment. Often field trips are geared towards history or art and other areas, such as math, are overlooked. Algebra teachers, how many

read more
Characteristics of an Effective Substitute Teacher

Characteristics of an Effective Substitute Teacher

When a full-time teacher is unable to be in their own classroom, an effective substitute must step in, often with minimal knowledge of what to expect. When substitute teachers are prepared with a passion for sharing knowledge as well as many

read more
Alleviating the Burden of Field Trip Management: Client Testimony

Alleviating the Burden of Field Trip Management: Client Testimony

The Travel Tracker was developed to alleviate the burden of Field Trip Management for school districts. From simplified trip request submissions to the real-time accessibility for managing trip logistics, the Travel Tracker software

read more
Recruiting Volunteers: Top 5 Reasons

Recruiting Volunteers: Top 5 Reasons

Many school districts are unaware of the impact that recruiting volunteers could have for the classroom. The diversity and value that volunteers offer help children further their education and provide them with an experience that may not

read more
Emergency Procedures for Substitute Teachers

Emergency Procedures for Substitute Teachers

Emergency Procedures for Substitute Teachers and How to Best Prepare Them Every day, teachers struggle with the thought of being out of the classroom due to sickness or other reasons for fear that the substitute won’t be prepared to handle all

read more