Scheduling Equipment - Try Google Docs

Since writing this post, I added a follow up here.

First...Some Resources
I put out a message on Twitter stating my intention to use Google Forms to create a tablet cart reservation system. I wanted to know if anyone had any tutorials or pointers for getting started. I received two messages. Martha Thornburgh pointed me to a Web 2.0 Wednesday Challenge created in Google Sites. I really liked her Google Doc presentation called Creating Forms and Surveys Challenge Tutorial. It helped me understand how the forms and spreadsheets connect. It helped me understand how to make the form public, too.

Christy Tvarok Green pointed me to a YouTube video called Quick and Easy Forms with Google Docs. I watched a bit of it after looking at Martha's presentation, but by that time I felt confident moving forward.

Happy Final Results
I put together a Saint Michael Tablet Cart Reservation form. It contains everything I think I might want to capture in reserving the cart: teacher name, date of reservation, help needed, and a place to type an 'x' to reserve the cart all day, and places to type an 'x' to reserve the cart by periods in the day.

In order to be able to check cart availability, I published the associated Google Spreadsheet as a public document.

Getting Around URL Problems
The biggest potential problem was publishing the URLs. I didn't want to type up a paper document or email the huge URL generated by Google. I decided to create a personalized TinyURL.

There is the ability to create a custom alias for a tiny URL. Now I have two:
http://www.tinyurl.com/sms-see-cart [and]
http://www.tinyurl.com/sms-get-cart

SMS stands for the school: Saint Michael School. I'm hoping the tiny URL is intuitive and relatively easy to remember.

Making It Easier on Me


As I was looking at the URL for the spreadsheet, the tiny orange chicklet caught my eye. I wondered what would happen if I copied the RSS feed into Google Docs. Lo and behold! Whenever someone reserves the cart, I get instant - up to five minute delay - notice of the reservation and whether or not the teacher feels that they will need assistance in their room. You can see a sample at the top of this post.

Downfalls
The biggest downfall was in the initial creation of the form. I didn't really think it through. I created it on-the-fly and made a different tiny URL. When I went to update the form, it did all kinds of crazy things to my spreadsheet. I ended up starting all over when I realized I didn't like the look of the spreadsheet and was too much of a novice to correct it.

I did learn, too, that I had to make the spreadsheet public so that the teachers could delete a row if they needed to reschedule the cart. Just to clarify things, most teachers do not use spreadsheets in the building. The first reservation needed to be reschedule and I walked the teacher through deleting the row with very little fuss.

Upside
All in all, if you're timid about getting started with Google Forms you should give it a try. There is an awful lot to be gained. The biggest upside, two teachers have used a Google Form and viewed a Google Spreadsheet this week. No training required.

Keeping Track of Wikis

The best part about collaboration on a wiki is that no one person has to be centrally responsible to update pages or comments. The difficulty arises when there are numerous collaborators. I've been trying to establish some best practices for myself when it comes to project management for all my students.

Winter Wonderland Project
I currently have three grade levels starting a three month project. It was put together by Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, and Vicky Sedwick. I am really struck by the level of organization in this project. I am very hopeful that with so many participants, my students will give and receive feedback between several different classrooms.

Each of my grade levels will be doing a slightly different project based on their current skill set. My Kindergarten, first, and third grade students are participating. From what I can see, there are about 50 teachers who have signed up to participate with various grade levels.

Keeping Track of a Moving Target
The projects are not moving targets, but the ebb and flow of each web page is. I want to be able to point my students to the existing content so that they do not become frustrated clicking on empty pages.

A while back, I remember hearing Vicki Davis talking about subscribing to the edits and discussions on all of her wikis. In 2007, my students and I started dipping our toes in the waters of wikis. I was quite able to keep up with every change since I only worked with one grade level at a time. The students didn't seem interested in using their password outside of class.

In 2008, I expanded the reach of wiki users in my building to the second through eighth grades. It was still fairly manageable. It was the first time I worked on other teacher's wikis, too. In these instances, there were few participants. The Winter Wonderland project is a horse of a different color.

How To...
The method is so easy in Wikispaces. By selecting the Manage Wiki link at the top left side of the screen, you are presented with a variety of options. One of those is the Notifications icon under the Tools set.

There are three RSS feed options: monitor edits and discussions, just edits, or just discussions. Alternatively, you could sign up for email notifications, but I did that last year. The mailbox filled up and I felt overwhelmed.

I selected the RSS feed for monitoring edits and discussions. I copied and pasted the link into Google Reader. Now I have one stop shopping for everything that is going on in that wiki.



My Thoughts for My Students
This method will not help my youngest students. My current plan is to find schools as they begin participating and bookmark them to the school delicious account. Today I was able to bookmark a Kindergarten and third grade page. I will walk them through the entire wiki and they can explore on their own. I will want the students to look directly at these pages, so it will give me flexibility to quickly route the students to one point in the wiki.

What Else Can I Be Doing?
My question comes from my knowledge that there are far more experienced teachers using wikis out in the wider world. What are you doing with your youngest students to make working within a wiki as easy and streamlined as possible? What ways of working do you have as a teacher to balance directing your students at content efficiently?

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Sierra, Piero. "Winter wonderland." Piero Sierra's photostream. 2 Dec 2008. 2 Dec 2006.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/108/311704005_8a41ff40bc.jpg?v=0

Maximize Your Blogspot Wordle

In my previous post's comment area, Andrea Hernandez asked how I was able to include all my blog posts in my Wordle. Changing some of my Blogger settings enabled me to have a wider view of all the words in my posts.

First Change the Settings
I signed in to Blogger and went to the Settings tab, then chose the Formatting link. I have my Show option set to display the last 30 days of posts. The setting can be switched between number of days and number of posts. I could see from my postings that I had 75 posts in 2007 and 80 in 2008. I set my Show option to 155 posts. You can have a maximum of 500 posts displayed.

Next Get Wordle Busy
Next, I went to www.wordle.net and entered my blog's URL into the second box on Wordle's create screen.

Capture the Image and HTML
When the Wordle image is created, they give you a piece of code to include in your blog or other website. It was smaller than I wanted, so I captured the screen using command+shift+4 on my Mac.

The code they provide looks like this:




I needed to change the reference for the image's source from Wordle's file server to the image I would upload to Blogger. I resized it using Gimp to 480 x 360. In Blogger, I used the Add Image icon on the Compose toolbar. Looking behind the scenes in the Edit Html tab, I could see the code generated by Blogger for that image. It made it more complex than I do when I hand code HTML, but I knew what I was looking for. Here is a sample of the code Blogger generates:







I was looking for the letters SRC to tell me the new source of the image I just uploaded. I have SRC highlighted in turquoise. I had to highlight everything from the HTTP to the PNG part, not including the quote marks. I copied that and pasted it over the same information in Wordle's HTML.

Now I had it displayed in a bigger size and it still links to the Wordle saved image.

More Than You Asked For
As I was doing this earlier tonight, I thought the second half of this explanation would be worth doing sometime, so I did this part for myself.

Just remember to go back and set the Show option on the Settings tab back to your usual setting so you don't slow down the page load for the people who come to visit your blog.

Tag - You're It

A few days ago, Lee Kolbert at A GeekyMomma's blog started a meme. She made a Wordle out of her blog's RSS feed. I liked the idea, but adjusted it so that it picked up all my blog posts instead of just the RSS feed's seven items.

Finding Out You're Tagged
Today I was looking at Technorati reactions through my Google Reader feed. I found out that I was tagged for the meme by Kevin Jarrett at his Welcome to NCS-Tech blog.

When I first started blogging, the only way I would find out I was tagged for a meme was if I happened upon the post or the person who tagged me told me. Over time, I learned about Google Reader and setting up various searches to keep up with posts pointing to my work on the web.

Technorati can seem like a vanity item at first, but it has so many other uses. One of those uses is the Search field. I typed my blog URL njtechteacher.blogspot.com in the search box. It generates an RSS feed that can be included in Google Reader as a subscription.



This morning, I saw this in my reader:


My Wordle and the Meme's Rules
1. Create a Wordle from your blog's RSS feed.
2. Blog it and describe your reaction. Any surprises?
3. Tag others to do the same.
4. Be sure to link back here and to where you were first tagged.

I modified my RSS feed to temporarily include my last 200 posts instead of the usual seven. Since I only have about 175 posts, it includes every post I've written since starting NJ Tech Teacher Musings.



My Reactions
I'm not too surprised. My posts are more about what I do with students, projects that work and need rework, and a lot of reflection for future attempts at projects in the classroom. The students are at the heart of it all. I work with all types of software both purchased and open source from Microsoft Office to Open Office, Kid Pix to the Gimp, iMovie, GarageBand, Scratch, and many others. I want the students to learn how to give presentations that are interesting and effective. I want the students to be able to tell a story. I take a fair number of surveys to learn what the students think about our work.

Tag - You're It
I would like to tag the following people. As Kevin said in his post, there is no need to do this if you are not interested. I enjoy completing memes if I have the time. Full disclosure: I did this instead of creating the lesson plans for the week.

Vicky Sedwick
Jan Smith
Patti Harju
Michelle Russell
Bonnie Kaplan

Let the game continue...

Word Projects on My Wiki

When I first started teaching computer class in grades Kindergarten (five year old students) to eight (14 year old students), I really didn't use much word processing.

My First Year
I clearly remember one of my fifth grade boys literally crying and asking why I couldn't type a small paragraph for him. His mom did all his typing. He came back recently for a visit. He's now in his second year in high school. He remembers too.

As we were talking, my fourth grade students were busily typing a paragraph in Word. They had just learn to use the Tab key to set up a "proper heading" on their paper.

My Seventh Year
I was speaking with the current fifth grade teacher. We were talking about the grades for computer class. I do many different projects, but I always take a look at their word processing skills when pulling together their grades. As a whole, the class had great grades the first marking period. I was reflecting on the difference. I think it is because I have been starting word processing lessons earlier and earlier with the students. As of five years ago, I began to include more word processing lessons as early as Kindergarten. These are the first students who have really benefited.

My Goal for 2008-2009
Last year, my goal was to gather most of my Kid Pix lessons on my wiki. I still have a few more to include as I add new things to the program each year and tweak and improve old lessons. This year, my goal is to gather most of my Word lessons on the same wiki. It's nothing particularly Earth shattering, but I'm becoming quite happy with the results.

I added a lesson for the second grade this year about fonts. I even wrote a poem for them to highlight and adjust. Seven years ago, I saw this type of lesson as something a middle school student should start to learn. As I continue to rethink my work, second grade seems more appropriate. I haven't presented the lesson yet, I still want to make something interactive for my Activboard. When I have the slides complete, I'll post more thoughts.

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Image Citation:
Forks, Brittany. "Crawfy is word processing." Kilobyte Couture's photostream. 28 Nov 2008. 22 Jan 2007.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/146/366559964_360b0977fa.jpg?v=0