As you know, I’ve been working on arranging my classroom for a few hours after summer school each day (I figure why make extra trips in August?). I wish I would have taken a “before” picture so I could show you the ”after”.  Last week Kate and I moved all my classroom furniture around–Confession: We moved filing cabinets, teacher’s desk, computers…all things we are technically not supposed to move by ourselves. But the big stuff is all where I need it to be, and now I get to unpack and place all the little stuff.

So, when rearranging do you plan where you are going to put everything and then move it? Or do you move stuff around and “test” it out? I’m sort of a combination girl…I try to plan it out, but I am NOT a spacial person and sometimes stuff doesn’t fit where I thought it would! So I found these websites where I can virtually set up my classroom: Scholastic Classroom Set Up Tool and Classroom Architect

Screen shot from Scholastic Classroom Set Up Tool

Pros of Scholastic Class Set Up Tool:

• You can make actual seating charts by entering student names and arranging your desks
• Resizing options
• Simple interface

Cons of Scholastic Class Set Up Tool:

• No actual dimensions
• Items don’t snap to any grid so it’s tricky to line things up (See desks!), this is annoying for a perfectionist like me!
• Labels are difficult to work with

This is a screen shot of the floor plan I made on Classroom Architect

Pros of Classroom Architect:

• You can enter the exact dimensions of your classroom.
• There are lots of furniture options, and then there is a drawing tool for any items they don’t include (Red Door and Cabinets along the back)
• This DOES have a grid snapping tool, LOVE IT, look at my tidy rows of desks!

Cons of Classroom Architect:

• You cannot resize the premade objects, you can only rotate them! This irritated me because my shelves are different sizes and my computer desk is way smaller than the one given. (I guess I could use the draw tool to make my own.)
• There are some classroom things they don’t include (Like doors, whiteboards, windows, etc…) You can make your own, of course.

Overall, I think these tools are very helpful, but my vote is for the Classroom Architect, simply because I can actually make it to scale.