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Stay Organized and Track Tasks with Google Sheets

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

When you are juggling many projects, staying focused and on task can sometimes be challenging. Having an effective to-do list will help you prioritize tasks and focus on getting critical ones done while not letting the small but still necessary to-do items fall through the cracks. Originally, I was a Post-it note or index card to-do lister. No matter what day it was, I had at least one Post-it note to help keep me on track. But I found that system works as long as you don’t need to track more than what you are doing today. Using a Post-it note or index card can help in a pinch, but this system can’t help you identify trends on how you’re spending your time. Having an effective system can be a lifesaver when reviewing what has been keeping you busy. It can also be a life support when looking ahead and what items you need to tackle that are coming down the pike. This is where a task tracker comes in handy.

What Is a Task Tracker?

screenshot of Google Sheets Spreadsheet template for Task Tracking

For our purposes, a task tracker is a spreadsheet used to keep us focused on a weekly basis. The spreadsheet has four columns: Priority, Task for This Week, Status, and Value Add. Each week, we duplicate the base sheet and fill it in with the items to be completed.

For each item, we identify the level of Priority for one column:

Priority Levels

  1. Urgent and Important [UI]
  2. Important but not Urgent [InU]
  3. Urgent but not Important [UnI]
  4. Not Important and not Urgent [nInU]

For sorting and filtering, it’s easier to have these as numbers 1 through 4. Having identified the level of priority will help you decide which tasks get your most productive hours of the day and/or most immediate energy.

In the spreadsheet, there is also a column for Status. This column can vary with how you fill it in, but it should include Completed, Delayed, In Progress, Canceled, and other signifiers as you feel they apply. Of course, one column will be the Tasks for This Week with a description or name for each task. And the last column will identify the Value Add. The value add is where you identify why you are doing something. How does doing this item benefit your company or employer? This column will be very different based on your particular role and job duties.

How to Use the Task Tracker Spreadsheet

You can use this template, and when you click, the link will ask you to make a copy to your Google Drive. Once copied to your drive, you will want to edit the spreadsheet to meet your needs. You can edit drop-down menus by changing the validation rules for each cell with a dropdown. Those rules will pop up when you click the arrow for the drop-down menu in a cell and click the Edit icon (pencil) at the end of the drop-down menu.

screenshot of Google Sheets Spreadsheet template for Task Tracking drop down menus

Now that you have your task tracker spreadsheet set up, don’t add tasks to the Blank sheet. Keep it for reference. Instead, do the following:

  • Duplicate the Blank sheet (right-click and select Duplicate) and name it the dates for that week.
  • (OPTIONAL) Hide the Blank sheet by right-clicking on the tab and selecting Hide Sheet.
  • During the week, add items to your spreadsheet and track them.
  • Set the priority of each task as you add tasks.
  • Set the value add of each task as you add tasks.
  • Continue adding tasks to the sheet (inserting rows as needed) and updating the status when needed.
  • As needed, sort the spreadsheet by the Priority column or Status column.
screenshot of a Google Sheets Status Drop-Down Menu for Task Tracking
  • Below the portion for tracking tasks, use the section for follow-ups and notes to note any follow-up phone calls, conversations, or emails you need to make or any updates or questions you have.
screenshot of Google Sheets Notes and Follow Up in a Task Tracking Spreadsheet
  • At the end of a week, duplicate the current week’s tab and rename it with dates for the upcoming week.
screenshot of a Google Sheets dates tabs
  • Leave items from the current week in the new week’s tab if they need to stay on your radar or if they are incomplete.

“Nerdify” Your Task Tracker Sheet

As if you aren’t nerdy enough by keeping your to-do list in a spreadsheet, consider using conditional formatting to color the cell based on the content of the dropdown box. For my task tracker spreadsheet, I have the row to turn green if the status is set to “Complete”. If the status is “In progress”, then the row is yellow. Otherwise, the row is red.

Instead of setting the conditional formatting based on the status, you could use the priority as the trigger for coloring the rows. If you are new to conditional formatting, then check out one of these previous posts to get more help:

How Will You Use It?

If you use the task tracker, how will you tweak it to make it fit your own style and processes? Will you do conditional formatting? What other features will you add to it to make it more user-friendly? Drop a comment below and let us know.

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Back to SchoolPlanning and Preparation

Get Organized with These Five Digital Tools

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Ever find yourself stressing over, well– everything? What if you had some digital tools that could ease your troubles? It’s no surprise that stress increases the less organized you are, and it can affect your sleep. Get organized and improve your health by decreasing:

  • Clutter. In digital or physical form, clutter raises the stress hormone cortisol.
  • Disorganization. Too much disorganization can inhibit sleep and distract you from tasks and other work you need to focus on.
  • Depression and feelings of overwhelm. It may be you have too much content to manage (source).

You can decrease the effects of disorganization, depression, and digital detritus by getting organized. Here are some recommendations from educators on digital tools that can help.

Tool #1: Create To-Do Lists

One way you can get a handle on what needs doing is through checklists. A popular checklist is a To-Do List. One tool you can try is Clickup. It’s “free forever” according to their website, and it makes keeping track of the following easy:

  • Tasks
  • Whiteboard
  • Docs
  • Chat
  • Goals

See a list of its features online. Looking for another option? Check out Google Notes, Todoist, and Microsoft ToDo as alternatives.

Tool #2: Block Social Media to Stay Focused

Find yourself working, then you get distracted by a ping from your social media? If you are working in a Chrome or Chromium brower, try StayFocusd. This donationware Chrome extension blocks a list of websites of your choice. This ensures that you remain focused on your work (or whatever you are trying to do).

get organized
Screenshot by author

StayFocusd restricts the amount of time you spend on websites. Once the allotted time expires, the website becomes inaccessible. Kind of scary, isn’t it?

Tool #3: Make How-To Guides for Students

If you’re like me, you may find yourself creating and sending tutorials to others. Scribehow.com may offer a tool you would find helpful in creating and organizing. Professor Fangirl [translated from Twitterspeak] writes:

I use Scribehow.com to create “how-to” guides for my students. These are about how to access course materials, grades, and more. It also helps new faculty learn how to maneuver through our school platforms. You can add steps and text to the pictorial guide it creates for clarity. (adapted for readability from source)

get organized
Screenshot by author

 

Tool #4: Take Notes on What You Read

One of my favorite annotation tools is Zotero. Zotero is a digital helper for note-taking and outlining, but it also helps with collection and organization. My daughter, a post-doctoral fellow, loves no-cost Zotero. Taking notes on what you are reading is important. What happens if you combine Zotero, a citation tool, with Notion, a powerful note-taking tool?

Free users in Notion get an unlimited number of pages, and you get a variety of page types. Now, Notion is quite powerful. You may find that it can support your needs as you work to organize them.

The Personal Pro Plan is free for students and educators. This lets you collaborate with unlimited guests and gives you version history. Sign up with your school email address and you’ll immediately gain access to these features. Change the email associated with your account to your school email address to get it for free. If you’re on our free Education Plan, you’ve been upgraded to the Personal Pro Plan. Visit the help center to learn more.

If you need a mobile-friendly app, then Notion may be the one (great eight-minute video) you are looking for. There are several video tutorials.

In a previous blog entry, I wrote:

Zotero offers collection, organization, citation, and research-sharing options. This allows you to save everything you have on the computer version of Zotero to the cloud. Zotero works on a variety of platforms. It is more of a citation and research sharing tool.

Now, you can also take notes on what you save to Zotero and Notion with the free Notero add-on. You may find this tutorial beneficial:

 

Tool #5: End Repetitive Typing

Find yourself typing the same comment or feedback message to students or colleagues? You may need a tool that I find helpful. This tool saves me time because it prevents me from having to retype the same (or almost the same) message. What I like about this type of tool is that I can fine-tune the wording and message, then save it for use again and again.

Two tools you can use include Text Expander and Phrase Express. You can watch a quick overview of Text Expander:

While both tools have costs associated, Phrase Express is free for personal use. Text Expander saves your text chunks or clips to the cloud, while Phrase Express runs on your own device. It works on Windows or Mac.

Watch this short tutorial for Phrase Express:

Here’s to starting out the school year with tools that can help us stay organized, be more focused, and get more sleep at night. Have any favorites of your own? Add them in the comments.

Feature Image Source

Created by TCEA.

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AndroidGoogle Tips and TricksiOS Tips and TricksTechnical Support

Find Your Stuff: Escape the File Management Maze

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“I hate Google, I can’t ever find anything,” says a colleague (name withheld). Having grown up organizing files and folders on floppy disks and hard drives, I can find most things. I spent most of my time at the command line, typing in text commands to copy, move, and delete files and folders. Those experiences, beginning at age 13, have served me well. However, the advent of cloud storage and obscure file saving protocols confuse many. Let’s take a look at some ways you can improve your file management skills.

First, let’s review findings from a The Verge article, File Not Found by Monica Chin.

Key Findings

College professors are encountering a growing problem with their students. Monica Chins notes the following:

The concept of file folders and directories…is gibberish to many modern students.

The problem isn’t only with college students. I have seen it firsthand on the desktops of teachers, directors, and colleagues in K-12. The fact is, they lack the mental schema for organizing digital files into folders. It’s too easy to create a file wherever they may be on their device or the cloud, then forget about it. When they need to locate it again, who knows?

Lacking digital organizational skills, educators and students resort to other approaches. Here are a few common scenarios I have personally seen.

Dysfunctional File Management Scenarios

Some may argue that whatever works, that’s what you do. But such solutions to file management problems can backfire. Before I share an approach and digital tools that make sense, let’s revisit a few that don’t.

Scenario #1: Print to PDF

In one situation, a teacher completing the Texas Reading Academy online saved her documents to the default Download folder, so that there were soon hundreds of files to sort through. It was almost easier to go back to the source and save the item again than to move it to the top of the list (chronological sort).

Scenario #2: Snap a Photo with Your Smartphone

Some see Google/Apple Photos apps offer a better, visual way of content management. Instead of saving a file to a specific location, they snap a photo of it. When they need the content of the file, they  scroll through the Photos app, zooming in as needed.

How many times have you seen someone snapping pictures of their computer screen at work? They weren’t documenting a heinous email. Instead, they were creating a visual archive.

Scenario #3: Save to Desktop

A common scenario, this one involves people putting all their files on the desktop of their device. I’ve seen some computers’ hard drives fail under the strain. This results in a catastrophic data loss.

How can you avoid this? Take advantage of any one of the following techniques. I’ve used them all with success.

Two Tips to Better File Management

Organizing files and folders since I was a youngster, I have found that the easier the system, the better. Easier systems are those that don’t expect me to remember where I put stuff. To ease my mind, I have relied on one or both of these tips below.

Tip #1: Organize by Year

folder structure in Google Drive
Screenshot by author

Many of create an amazing amount of content each year. Keeping track of it can be quite difficult. In the old days, people organized content by topic. This presumably made it easier to find with a few files. The truth is, organizing by topic results in a huge mess of folders and files.

Instead, organize by year. Create a folder (e.g. 2022, 2021, 2020), then anything you make, drop it in that folder. Put related files together. For example, say you have a word processing document with an embedded chart. Put the document and the spreadsheet in a folder together.

If folders are tough, give them the same prefix for their filename, such as “Project123_.” This ensures they appear together in the alphabetical list of files. This also makes the files findable.

One more suggestion: Try creating an index document of all the files you have. This is easy to do in Google Docs or on your computer.

Tip #2: Try Inbox Zero Approach

file manager
Screenshot by author

Most people have trouble remembering what they have and whether it’s worth keeping. When you can go out on the web to find anything, you have to decide what’s essential or not. Inbox Zero uses a simple organizational principle for email. This is a variation on that system.

On my hard drive, I have two overarching categories. They include the following:

  • Closed folder
  • Open folder

You can call your folders anything, but I wanted simple words that I didn’t have to think about much. The Closed folder has sensitive data, data I have encrypted. It includes my medical records, contracts, anything else I wouldn’t want anyone to see. The Open folder has everything else. Now, in each folder, I have more folders that I dump everything into.

file manager
Screenshot by author

It looks like this (folder names shown only):

  • Closed
    • Family
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019, etc.
    • Work
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019, etc.

The Open folder has the same organizational structure. Again, I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about how to place files. I’d rather spend my decision-making power on more important tasks. The reason I made it this way is that I wanted a quick way to back up important files from my computer. Anything I am working on this year (2021), goes into the 2021 Work folder. If it’s personal, it goes in the _Open->_2021 folder. See how easy that is?

Of course, anything I put in the Closed folder, I encrypt. You may not want to mess with that. You could organize by year, then drop encrypted files in with unencrypted items. Keep it as simple as you need to.

Get a List of Files and Folders

Need to know where everything is? If on Windows, you can do this several ways.

Approach #1: Tree

Open the CMD line (type “cmd” in the search bar at bottom right), then when you get to the command line, type the following:

tree /f /a > file.txt.

The file.txt file will contain a hierarchical listing of all the files on your device, as shown below.

file manager
Screenshot by author

Approach #2: Dir

Another CMD line friendly approach is to use the Dir command. Open the CMD line and type:

dir c:\ /s /b /oe /a-d >index.txt

It will give you a file list inside a text document that you can review.

Approach #3: Directory Lister

If the command line approaches aren’t attractive, try Director Lister. This is a program you get in the Microsoft Store (free), that will index your folders and devices. Initial indexing will take a while, depending on the size of your storage device(s).

file manager
Screenshot by author

Once complete, you will be able to copy and paste the list of files stored on your computer’s hard drive.

file manager
Screenshot by author

What’s great is that you can get a file listing (see above) that is clickable. This makes it easy to search and find files for those located on your device.

And Directory Lister works with Google Drive for Desktop. You can see part of my Google Drive for Desktop (Google Workspace for Education) below:

file manager
Screenshot by author

That means, if you don’t know where a file is on Google Drive for Desktop, you can find it with Directory Lister.  See a search for a document below:

file manager Screenshot by author
Screenshot by author

What’s more, you can export the file and then pull it up in your internet browser to click on it. When you click on it, the file will open if it is not a Google document (e.g. *.gsheet, *.gslides). For example, PDFs, MP4s, and others will open in your browser. That’s simple file management!

More File Management Tools

Looking for more file management tools? Once you get into organizing files and folders on your computer or device, you may find you like it. I use several different tools, depending on what device I am on.

Here are my favorite digital tools by device:

  • Windows 10? Use Free Commander. I have mentioned it before in my Three Tips to Organize Google Drive blog entry. What’s more, I became a lifetime donor, which gives me free updates for the lifetime of the product.
  • Mac? Use muCommander. The free muCommander works on Windows as well, so if you work on both platforms, you may want to use one tool.
  • Android? Cx File Explorer. This easy-to0use, simple, and no-cost file manager makes navigating the guts of your Android device a cinch.
  • iOS? Readdle’s Documents.On iOS, you can’t jump between files and folders like you can on other devices, but you can put all your files and folders in one app. Readdle’s Documents is that app, and the best file/folder manager around for iOS. You can also read ebooks, play music, connect to cloud storage, and use WiFi transfer with it. It’s the Swiss Army knife of file managers on iOS.

The start of a new year is a great time to get your digital life organized. A few hours now will save you years of anguish later.

Feature Image Source

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

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remote learning
Good Teaching

Tech Tools and Best Practices with Remote Learning

by Crystal Fuentes, Guest Author
written by Crystal Fuentes, Guest Author

As educators prepare for going back to school, some may still feel uncertain as to what our upcoming year will look like — and most importantly, how it will start. In March, we were all thrown into the deep sea of remote learning regardless of whether we were tech-savvy enough to swim or not! It is safe to say though that teachers now have a wide variety of tech tools under their belt.

Here are eight tips on using tech tools that enhance best practices for remote learning and even traditional settings. Whether your district will follow a hybrid model or full remote model, the following digital tools and examples from additional resources will help you be ready for whatever comes your way.

Digital Organization for Remote Learning

Being organized can help to reduce stress and focus on what’s most important, allowing more time for teaching or facilitating the learning of students, while also helping them access resources easily. Google Classroom has a fairly new feature where assignments or questions can be categorized by topics for efficient organization.

Creating hyperdocs is another way to keep tasks and assignments in one document where students are provided hyperlinks and instructions for a self-paced lesson. Google Sites is a great tool that is free and available for Google users to set up a digital classroom where students can visit to access resources, assignments, important upcoming dates, and other materials all in one place.  

Increase Student Engagement

In order to increase student participation during remote learning, we must keep them engaged with interactive lessons. Nearpod is a teacher favorite that focuses on learner participation with a wide variety of activities embedded, such as open-ended questions, fill-in-the-blank, Flipgrid, and matching pairs, available for feedback and assessments.

Content media can easily be included in the lessons as well, such as videos, VR field trips, 3D objects, and Sways. This tech tool is constantly evolving to meet teacher needs in order to keep every student engaged while delivering a live lesson for synchronous learning or a student-paced lesson for asynchronous learning.

Nearpod has a full library of already created interactive lessons that are aligned to state standards ready to be assigned to students. Classflow is a cloud-based software that allows for effective lesson delivery and you don’t necessarily need an interactive display. Pear Deck is a Google Slides add-on that helps teachers create interactive lessons with different activities and assessments for students to participate in during a live lesson.

Finally, Edpuzzle is a life saver when it comes to assigning videos to students. This tool allows teachers to embed questions, narration, or notes throughout any video to check for comprehension and ensure students are fully engaged. 

Facilitate Student Learning

Become a facilitator and encourage students to take ownership of their own learning. You can create and assign a hyperdoc for an entire week, allow students to complete it at their own pace, and set a due date for students to submit all of their work. You can use Google Docs or Google Slides to create those interactive lesson documents with hyperlinks and resources. 

Timely Student Feedback

Timely feedback from students in real time allows the opportunity to monitor and adjust instruction immediately to meet their needs. You can empower every student with a voice by actively participating using collaborative Google Drawings or any other Google tool, interactive assessments with Quizizz, fun synchronous assessments with Kahoot, and game-based quizzes using Time to Climb activities in Nearpod.

Another amazing tool that allows for students to have a voice is Flipgrid. While you effortlessly engage learners, you also provide the opportunity to boost their confidence. 

Student Collaboration

Collaboration among students not only increases their confidence and keeps them actively learning, but also allows them to problem solve with peers while developing one of the critical skills needed in the real world.

Padlet is a digital platform where teachers can create beautiful collaborative boards for students to contribute with a variety of media. They can post content such as text, hyperlinks, images, and videos.

Nearpod also has a collaborative activity where students can post ideas or resources to one digital board. Teachers can also share templates they create in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings, granting them editing rights to work synchronously in real time to complete a task or assignment as a group. 

Limit Screen Time

Just because students are learning remotely does not mean all of the work needs to be done digitally. Students can be given a project-based assignment and be asked to reflect  or present it to peers using a tech tool, such as Flipgrid or Seesaw. Within both of these platforms, students can record a video of themselves and safely share with peers. 

Video Recording

Video tutorials are one of the best ways to teach anything while showing visuals or using a digital whiteboard, especially on YouTube! Screencastify or Loom will allow you to record yourself explaining a concept while sharing your desktop screen and simply uploading it to YouTube to share with students. 

Communication with Students and Parents

Communication is key. One of the best interactive tools to openly communicate with students, parents, and even colleagues is Google Sites. As mentioned in the first tech tip for best practices, Sites allows the user to organize any content and media in pages and personalize it to make it fun.

The site can be shared and viewable to not only students but parents as well to create a centralized digital location for all important classroom information and resources for student success. Think of it as a digital open-house for the entire year! 

Photo by Thomas Kolnowski on Unsplash

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Online Tools and AppsProfessional Learning

Clip That Web Page with Joplin

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

If you need to keep track of information off the web, you’re not alone. In this blog entry, we’ll explore Joplin, a new tool with rich features for web clipping and note aggregation. Before we do that and explore its use in education, let’s take a moment to review some statistics.

Internet Stats

Why is it important to be able to keep track of information you find on the web? While it’s easy to search for content, it’s difficult to find again that poignant quote or message or must-read article. Worse, given the amount of content that appears online, chances are, you won’t see it again. Consider these 2019 statistics:

  • People publish four million blog posts every day on the Internet.
  • People send five-hundred million tweets daily.
  • There are 1.94 billion websites in the world.
  • Hackers attack ninety-thousand websites per day.
  • WordPress blogs make up 83% of websites hacked.

In simple terms, that’s a lot of content to keep track of from a lot of different sources. What’s worse, it’s changeable and could disappear due to nefarious actions. When you find something valuable on the web, how do you save it for when you need it, even if it’s no longer online? The answer can be expensive, or not.

Solutions That Save Your Content

Some of my favorite content grabbers include Read It Later’s Pocket and Nuzzle. The magic of these tools is that they work great on mobile devices, as well as on your desktop (e.g. laptop) browser. They make it simple to save content to your device. Eric Curts (@ericcurts) writes:

Nuzzel is a free service that curates content from the people you follow on Twitter. When you sign up for Nuzzel, you give it permission to see who you follow. This enables Nuzzel to read all the tweets they post.

This can be valuable because you get to see what others are reading. Read It Later’s Pocket works in a different way. You can add blog entries, web pages, and online content to Pocket so that you can view each later (it provides a simplified look to a page such as what Reader View Chrome extension shows). You can even set Pocket to read the content aloud to you with its Text To Speech (TTS) option in mobile.

joplin

Many are familiar with note tools and web clippers, such as Evernote and OneNote. The former has lost much of its glory due to diminishing features and increasing cost. The latter, OneNote, continues to add features. As useful as MORE features are however, it does require committing to the Microsoft ecosystem.

What if you wanted a simpler solution that makes web clipping easier?

joplin

Source: Joplinapp.org

A Simple Web Clipper and Note-Keeper

One of my favorite note-keeping tools is Joplin Note Taker and To-Do application. The program can be set up (get installation programs) on most platforms. That includes Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux, and mobile (e.g. iOS and Android). It is, unfortunately, not available for Chromebooks. In essence, you combine the utility of tools like these shown below into one:

  • Google Keep
  • Microsoft To-Do (which is the old Wunderlist, discontinued in February 2020)
  • Evernote with Web Clipper
  • OneNote with Web Clipper

Joplin describes itself in the following way (slight edits):

Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application. It can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. Copy, search, tag or change the notes. You can change them with Joplin or using your own text editor. The notes are in Markdown format (get a Markdown Editor for your computer). You can paste in HTML code as well.

The magic of Joplin is that it can save your notes to the cloud storage of choice. This includes spaces such as NextCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or a networked directory. Since the source files are text files, you can inspect them, back them up, or move them. This gives you the ability to grab your data and run, if you want to.

Joplin offers end-to end-encryption for your notes and saved content. This makes it a great solution for top secret notes. Or, if you’d rather use your own text encryption, you can paste that into Joplin’s note body without fear. Other GUI-oriented note keepers convert your text, adding hidden characters, which can hinder decryption.

Joplin’s Web Clipper

Joplin provides a web clipper (pictured above) that works with both Firefox and Chrome. And, if you’re wondering if it works with Chromium browsers, the answer is, “Yes, it does.” This makes it a versatile tool on your desktop browser.

Neat features that will appeal to some when you clip a web page include:

1-You can save a web page without images as markdown text.

joplin

2-You can clip a web page as an image, HTML with images.

There are several other options for web clippings. Compared to my experiences with Evernote and OneNote, Joplin does an outstanding job. You can organize your content in notebooks and sub-notebooks and add tags to make it easier to find. Of course, it works on mobile so you are never without your notes. Unlike other tools, it also saves a copy of your notes on your device. That’s great if you are somewhere and you need to view your notes with no internet.

Pet Peeve: One of my complaints with other note-taking tools is they are internet hungry. They are also resource heavy and sluggish on some devices. Joplin is neither.

Sharing Joplin Content

Wondering how you can share clipped content? You can take the notes Joplin has saved in your cloud storage and then serve them up. Even if you lack access to Joplin while on the road, you can view your markdown files. Navigate to a note and open it. Here’s the view:

You can open Joplin notes with the editor of your choice. On Windows 10, two of my favorites include MarkText and Typora. It works great with markdown and HTML conversions, but makes content easy to edit. Give it a try if you need a no-cost text editor with GUI aspirations.

If you’re wondering how expensive Joplin is, “No worries there, mate!” It is a free, open source tool available at no cost. Give it a try, you can’t go wrong with it. See their tutorial online at their website. You can learn more about Joplin at this TCEA blog.

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Man speaking to large audience
Professional Learning

Six Steps to Easy Virtual Conference Organization

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

The day has arrived, that moment when you look around the room and say, “We’re ready.” Ready for what? To put on your own online conference. You’ve seen how others do it, and now you have the technology to get the job done. After that, it’s about the logistics, the details of organization. In this blog entry, I’ll share a few ideas about how to organize your own online conference.

Organization Is the Key

Getting organized means more than just marshaling your team of able-bodied assistants. These assistants will need to work hand-in-hand with you, or at least online, to organize the event. Some things you will need to take into consideration appear below.

#1 – Establish a Timeline for the Virtual Conference

Set dates for such things as website development, proposal submissions, etc. Setting a timeline can be critical for smaller teams to ensure the work gets done. It’s also important for larger group to facilitate collaboration and transparency. Be sure to set measurable goals, know who is doing what by when, and how to follow-up.

#2 – Set Up an Online Presence

You can do this via a website or learning management system. This will allow others to find you and make it easier for you to communicate the upcoming event. One of my favorite tools is the new Google Sites. Google Sites is easy to edit, collaborative, and integrates with Google Drive. That makes it simple to insert calendars, Docs, Sheets, and Slides files. For example, embed a Slides file that doubles as a virtual flyer that participants can blow up full screen or print.

What’s more, Google Sites is mobile responsive. That makes it a wonderful companion on the day of the session. Skip paper.

Don’t forget that a part of going virtual is knowing where to store your video content. Consider creating your own YouTube channel, then post all presentation videos there. Or, if you don’t like YouTube, use Vimeo, G Suite EDU (unlimited storage), or Microsoft OneDrive for Schools. Where you store your videos will make a difference.

My top two favorite locations are YouTube (video) and Google Drive (audio or video). Both offer unlimited storage and are easy to access for most.

Another alternative is Flipgrid.com. Flipgrid offers a powerful professional development presence if you prefer video. Imagine creating a Flipgrid grid featuring keynote/featured speakers. You can invite conference attendees to post their own responses, as well as presentations in Flipgrid topics inside the grid. Learn more online via Flipgrid.

Did You Know?

Sign up for one of our Google Certified Educator certifications. You’ll learn about more than Google Meet, as well as earn 12 CPE hours per course. Use these courses to get Google Educator certified. Find out more online.

#3 – Add a Virtual Conference App

As nice as a mobile responsive website is, you may want to organize your conference sessions as an app. You can do so in several ways. Let’s review them:

  • Google Sheets and Glide App. The Glide app is one of my favorite tools. You can organize your session schedule in Google Sheets, adding animated GIFs and images. What’s more, you can add links to session titles and have them point to the presenter’s materials. You can even put links to the video of the presentations, if an asynchronous conference. That means you change your content in the Google Sheet, and it updates in the app on people’s smartphones. Wow! And Glide makes it possible for you to open up a conversation with attendees as well.
  • Sched. This tool provides, at a discounted rate for non-profits and EDUs, a host of features.
  • Voxer. Want to create a virtual space where attendees can discuss the import of a virtual keynote? Use Voxer to set up virtual discussion rooms, audio only, that empower chats. Participants can have real-time conversations about a virtual session. Only one conference organizer would need to have a Voxer Pro account ($30 per year). You can embed links to Voxer chats in your app, too. (See the example below.)

Again, you can offer these apps as added features. Or consider running your whole conference via an app interface. You can share the app with a custom short address via social media like Twitter, bulk email, or Instagram.

See Glide app with embedded link to a Voxer chat shared online.

#4- Request Presentation Proposals

One of the easiest ways to capture presentation proposals is Google Forms. Realize that you may have to process the responses in Google Sheets. What the word “process” means in this situation is to get the data out of Google Sheets into Google Docs. This makes presentation and use of the Forms-collected data better and easier to work with.

There are several ways to process information in Sheets. One way  is to use a marketplace app like Document Studio. Another is to use Save as Doc. Both make it easier to shift data from Sheets (hard to read) into a Google Doc (easier, like mail merge). AutoCrat, yet another option, makes it possible to create PDFs, as well.

An important question to ask is, How will presenters license their content? It may seem a trivial point, but you may want to encourage participants to use Creative Commons. This makes the content re-usable. I would recommend a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license. Learn more about Creative Commons and open educational resources (OER). You can also read the TCEA TechNotes blog entries on the subject.

#5 – Grid Your Sessions

Figure out early how you are going to arrange your time in a virtual conference. Doing this maintains a sense of order. It grants attendees a sense of normality. Be sure to think about how much time your attendees will want to spend sitting in front of their computer screen. Allow for breaks and some networking opportunities.

virtual conference

Here’s a sample session grid you can use. Note that you can link the titles to specific pages about each session. Even if you only use the session grid for planning, it will help you organize time better. Plug in sessions as you get them. Ask yourself, “What would work better?”

#6 – Decide on Synchronous or Asynchronous

One tough aspect of any virtual conference is when it should happen. That is, should it happen in real time? If you decide on real time, synchronous discussions, scheduling can be a nightmare. You have to make sure that presenters, who may be in different time zones, know when to connect. You also have to find the appropriate virtual conferencing platform.

Option A: Synchronous

Selecting a virtual conferencing platform can be expensive. The reason why is that the free option of a platform may not scale. You could pick a platform that can handle ninety-nine participants for free. But since your virtual conference could have a few hundred people, you would fill the room. This leaves leave others out in cold cyberspace. The best platform out there now, and most popular, is Zoom.

Zoom has a lot going for it and works great on mobile devices. Imagine attending a conference while at the grocery store. Consider watching a session during breakfast. I’ve done both via Zoom. You can save the video of a session as an MP4 and then publish it later via YouTube.

Option B: Asynchronous

For asynchronous sessions, there are many benefits. For low-cost and low-stress events, this is my preference. This is a session when not all members are online at the same time. With asynchronous sessions, you can ask presenters to submit a link. That link can be to their own website featuring their resources and materials.

More importantly, you can ask the presenters to post their video on YouTube or Vimeo. The benefit of this is that everyone gets their resources and videos finished ahead of time. Then, at the scheduled time, event organizers send the video links out. They have the choice of sending them out via email, social media, or add to the event website or app.

My recommendation? Go asynchronous. You can gather all the materials by the deadline date, then publish a complete product. People can watch the event unfold as you publish videos and resources. Post conference, you can “lock up the content” or even charge others for access.

Explore Some Virtual Conference Examples

While there are many examples for successful face-to-face events, consider a few examples of virtual ones.

Example #0: TCEA’s Elementary Technology Conference

Our own elementary-focused summer PD event has gone virtual. We’ve included the opportunity to earn 14 lives CPEs, and more than 100 hours of on-demand credit. Plus, we’re working to keep the beach vibes of our traditional in-person event going, with social events, and virtual ways to explore Galveston.

Check out the details (and register!) on the Elementary Technology Conference site.

Example #1: LearnON Online Conference

Want to learn more about Microsoft OneNote? What if you could learn from expert users of Microsoft OneNote, focused on different aspects of the tool? If that’s of interest, then you would have loved this multi-day, digital event. This conference, organized by Jared DeCamp, trended in 2018. He organized various speakers and saved their video recordings to Vimeo. Then, at the appropriate time, he posted the videos to a temporary website (now offline).

Jared sold an All Access Pass that provided late-comers access to all content. That content included conference recordings and audio recordings (great for joggers and treaders). He threw in a webinar on how he used OneNote to plan events and a five-day course. Watching his one-person organization was a master-class in virtual conference management.

Takeaway: Don’t sell yourself short. One person can organize quite a bit via email and with a few video links.

Example #2: DitchSummit

Matt Miller, of Ditch That Textbook fame, has a great event every year. You can listen to his pitch for the conference. The Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit accomplishes several goals.

First, it advertises Matt’s creative efforts, such as his blog, books, and services. It also gets a lot of creative people to share their work with a global audience via short, powerful videos. Watching the videos earns participants some learning and free certificates. If you are a Texas-approved SBEC provider of CPE credits, then you can issue credit for participants, too.

Participants are often quite motivated to watch these events. You can relive the events via sketchnotes made by participants. You can see work from 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to gather a few friends and put on your own event. The more grassroots it is, the more engagement for some you are trying to build community with.

Example #3: EdCamp Voxer

This was one of the most amazing events I have participated in. I didn’t expect that audio alone would be powerful enough for a conference experience. It was. You can learn more about EdCamp Voxer at the link above.  Consider this excerpt about the event (edited):

Using Voxer, participants had instant access. They could respond to each other, even while traveling to and from family functions. Teachers had the autonomy for self-directed professional growth. The best teacher professional growth does not only occur between the walls of the school. Or at a designated time.

Participants crafted the daily agenda and contributed authentic local experiences. Time and location were no longer variables. The goal was deeper learning. It was not creating the typical surface-level echo chamber for the sake of compliance. Adapted from Randall Sampson’s article.

Today, you can use Voxer as a companion app for augmenting learning conversations.

Example #4: Online Conferences

My first introduction to an online conference was the K-12 Online Conference. Dr. Wesley Fryer was one of the early organizers. You can find the archived content online. It ran from 2006 through 2018, so there is a lot of content. Explore it to see all the amazing content generated at no cost to anyone.

Note how video is used to introduce a wide range of sessions being offered.

Example #5: Global Education Conference

Another online conference is the Global Education Conference. Steve Hargadon and Lucy Gray continue to organize and work on this conference. Since the conference is still ongoing, you can see how they organized it at their website.

In this blog entry, I’ve shared some steps and examples for organizing your own virtual conference. There are many details, but if you take your time, you can put together an incredible conference. The technologies available now make conferencing online easy. Give it a try.

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curation
Content AreasLeadershipLibraries

Curate Like a Professional

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

Curator. What does that word call to mind? Museums? Art? A simple Google Images search will reinforce that notion. Now think about curation. Maybe you envision the very same. But if you try a search in Google Images for curation, you’ll uncover entirely different results.

What Is Curation?

Curation is something of a buzzword in education today, especially the phrase content curation. And regardless of your role, you are likely a content curator. The question is how effectively you curate. Librarians often excel in this, as do many teachers. Whether you are starting out as a content curator or honing your skills, there are a few things to keep in mind.

  • Curation should be selective. Dumping information, sites, or titles into a repository isn’t curation. Curation is more than simply collecting. In her blog post on “Curation Situations,” Joyce Valenza takes it further, adding to the process purpose, audience, context, and commentary. When curating resources, go with what you know. Dumping now will require tidying up later. (But if you find yourself needing to introduce Kon Marie techniques to your files, take advice from Lori Gracey in her recent post “Tidying Up Our Digital Lives.”)
  • Choose your curation tool(s) carefully. Does the tool you’re using allow you to adequately convey information? Can your audience easily understand what you are sharing? Is the tool easily accessible by your audience and across devices? Do you need the ability to collaborate? Some tools allow for annotation and image selection while others might provide only a single-image option and no added text. Tailor your curated collection to you and your audience’s needs.  
  • Promote your curated resources. There’s no point in spending time and effort creating collections that no one will see or use. Resources need to be quick and easy to find and intuitive to use. Let your teachers and students know how and where to find your collections. Are you going to send links? Will they be shared in a Classroom or perhaps posted to a website? Consider these questions as you select a tool or app.

Creating Meaningful Collections

So where do you start? Consider some of these options to help you construct meaningful resource collections that have value both for you and others.

  • Google Sites – Sites can do it all. Video, files, images, links. Create multiple pages. Add collaborators who can also contribute and edit content. This is a fantastic tool for students to use as well.
  • Symbaloo – Probably the most simplistic of the many options available, Symbaloo provides a grid that you can customize with web links. Symbaloo is best described as a visually-based collection of bookmarks. Group and color code content. Share or embed your Symbaloo for students to access. The biggest downside is the inability to annotate the individual buttons.
  • Scrible – Scrible is an app best utilized to curate research resources.  Use it to create a library of articles and web pages that can be annotated, organized, and shared. The EDU plan is free for K-12 and offers one-click citations and one-click bibliographies. Additionally, Scrible interfaces neatly with Google, offering a Chrome extension and compatibility with Classroom.
  • Wakelet – With the deactivation of Storify, Wakelet is a fantastic resource for curation. Create collections of anything on the web and use it for digital portfolios and digital storytelling. Students 13 and up can create their own accounts and create their own collections and compile research resources. See an example of Wakelet in action by checking out the #txlchat archives.  Find out more about getting started with Wakelet in these posts from TCEA and Kathleen Morris. Another strong selling point for Wakelet is its availability across platforms. Use the Android or iOS app, access it on a laptop or Chromebook, and even enable the Chrome or Firefox browser extensions.
  • Smore – If you want a visually appealing, more focused tool, consider Smore. It’s more than a digital flyer. Work with pictures, links, and text to create resource lists, toolkits, and more. You can share as a PDF or with a link. It’s an easy way to deliver resources to your teachers and students straight to their inboxes.
  • Pinterest – No discussion about curation would be complete without Pinterest. Create digital bulletin boards, select images for and annotate your pins, and follow other boards and users. Use the Chrome extension to make saving web pages even easier. Access Pinterest on any device, and share and receive pins directly with friends. You will find boards and pins for any resource imaginable. Whether you’re looking for display ideas, book promotions and titles, curriculum ideas, technology tips, literacy, makerspace ideas, quotes, digital citizenship resources, or good ol’ nerdy fun, you’ll probably find it and much, much more on Pinterest.

This is a guest blog post by Kristi Starr. Kristi is the library media specialist and co-campus technology leader at Coronado High School in Lubbock ISD and the President of LIB-SIG. This blog is part of a monthly series of blogs from LIB-SIG. 

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bookmarks
Google Tips and TricksTechnical Support

Bookmark Organization the Easy Way

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

There are many amazing tools available for organizing your Chrome browser bookmarks. Whether it’s a social bookmark tool (e.g. Diigo) or just built-in browser management, the tools make it simple. Yet it’s the simple tools that many of us overlook. Tired of wading through a pile of bookmarks, I recently decided to look around for a better solution and found a Chrome add-on that you may also want to use.

Really? Bookmarks?

“Bookmark organization…that’s so early 21st century,” you might be saying. Why get excited about bookmark management? But if you’re like a lot of folks, myself included, you may want something simple. If you have to manage bookmarks on your Chromebook by sorting through tons of bookmarks to find what you need, you will love this Chrome extension.

I had been using social bookmarking tools like Diigo because it makes sharing bookmarks with others, well, social. You can get an RSS feed for a collection of bookmarks that’s based around a tag. You can use Diigo to annotate a web page. Diigo offers educators free or reduced cost options. The problem is, it’s too much trouble. I just don’t want to mess with bookmark tools and add-ons. There are other options, though.

Google Chrome’s Bookmark Manager

Google Chrome comes with a built-in bookmark manager that is pretty powerful.

bookmark menu

You can create folders for your bookmarks to organize them. These folders, when placed in your bookmarks bar, allow you to group your bookmarks. In the screenshot below, you can see three folders, including Work, Tools, and Microsoft.

In the picture below, you can see that clicking on any one of the folders will reveal the bookmarks. I’ve clicked the Tools folder to show a list of bookmarks.

You can use this built-in bookmark manager without any additional extensions. Open it with a keyboard shortcut on Windows (Ctrl-Shift-O). You can enhance the built-in manager with a Chrome extension.

Did You Know?

You can easily transfer your bookmarks between computers or devices. Turn on Sync in your Chrome browser settings. Your extensions, like the one mentioned below, and your bookmarks will get copied to other computers you are signed in to. You can also export your bookmarks as an HTML file and then import it using the Chrome Bookmark Manager.

Open Bookmark Manager

The Open Bookmark Manager makes getting to the built-in bookmark manager in Chrome easier by adding a quick button. This is faster than clicking on Settings, Bookmarks, and then Bookmark Manager. The button appears in the extension panel (top right corner of your browser). You will see a white star on a blue background.Additional features include setting up keyboard shortcuts to jump straight to your bookmark folder of choice.

Keep It Simple

In a world full of complex, new tools, an old maxim rules supreme: keep it simple.  Open Bookmark Manager makes getting to Google’s Bookmarks Manager easy and simple. That makes it worth adding to your favorites, right? (pun intended)

 

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Google Calendar
ChromebooksGoogle Tips and Tricks

A Teacher’s Guide to Google Calendar

by Jennifer Bergland
written by Jennifer Bergland

The Google Calendar is a little used jewel for keeping you organized. This is especially true for a teacher who has a never-ending list of things to do and places to be. I have a confession to make — I am lousy at using lists. I make them, but then rarely use them to guide my day. Instead, I’ve found that I work best by using a calendar to track my tasks as well as my events.  Let’s explore a few ways a teacher can use the Google Calendar to keep them on track and organized. 

Layout of Google Calendars

Before we look at specific uses, we need to review some of the basics of Google Calendar. The calendar allows you to create multiple planners that can be toggled on and off. This allows you to create calendars that have a specific purpose (homework, lesson plans, cheerleader practice) that can be shared separately. However, you can also view them together. In the above image, you can detect the different calendars by their color. 

Different Types of Calendars

The next thing you need to understand is that Google groups your calendars in two lists — MyCalendar Calendars and Other Calendars. My Calendars are calendars that you created or were created for you and that you have been given the ability to manage. These calendars are located at the top of the list of calendars. Other Calendars are calendars that you have added or that have been added for you by your G Suite administrator. This list of calendars is below the calendars that you own and/or manage.

Homework Calendar

Let’s start by creating a calendar to help your students and their parents keep track of assigned homework. You only have to generate the homework information once and then let parents and students access the calendar at a time that fits their schedule. No more filling out homework sheets for individual students. You could also assign a different student each day to enter the information on the calendar.

Calendar

You will next want make sure you share your calendar with the public and possibly give other individuals more specific sharing permissions.

Calendar

Finally, you will need to decide how you will share your calendar with the world. You can either do this by copying the URL for the calendar and link to the calendar in an email or possibly post the link on a website. You could also embed your calendar either in a Google site or another website.

And finally, you can share the iCal address with individuals who have another type of calendar application.

Calendar

Lesson Plan Calendar

Using Google Calendar as a place to store your lesson plans can be very useful. For each activity, create an event. Within the event details window, you can attach handouts, links to be used in the lesson, and other instructions you might want to give your students. If you need to print your lesson plans, use the Schedule View.

Calendar

Add Useful Calendars

There are other calendars you can add to your Google calendar that provide you with information that you may find helpful. A great example are the UIL calendars. UIL has published their events on four Google Calendars and made them available to the public. All you have to do is subscribe to their calendars by clicking on the + sign at the bottom right of the calendar. All four will be added to your Other Calendars.

Calendar

Google also has some calendars you might find useful or interesting. Remember, these calendars will be added to your Other Calendars.

Calendar

Viewing the Task List in Calendars

I already confessed that I’m not good with tasks, but for those that are, Google has a very useful Task list that you can access via the Gmail or Calendar app. For this blog, we are going to focus on using the Task list from your calendar.

First, let’s toggle the Task calendar on.

Calendar

Let’s make sure the Task list is visible and you know how to add tasks to the list. Note that adding tasks to the list works exactly the same in the Gmail app.

Calendar

In order to view a task in your Task calendar, you must add a date in the event details.

Calendar

My one complaint is that the task is only visible at the top of the day it is to be accomplished. As of now, you can’t assign a specific time to accomplish the task (i.e. 8:30 am). Google, if you are reading this blog, PLEASE consider adding this feature. Instead of using a list, I assign a specific time to accomplish a task and put those directly on my calendar. I could be persuaded to use this app if I could do this via a Task list. 

Most people who use lists love the experience of crossing off the items that have been accomplished. This is as easy as checking a box in the Google Task list. Note that the item is crossed off in the list and calendar view.

Calendar

Reserving a Room or Resource

One very helpful tool in Calendar is that within the event details you can reserve a room or a resource. No more going to the library to check out the iPad cart or signing up for the library. There all kinds of uses for this feature. The types of resources can be grouped together to make it easy if the list becomes too long. In order to use this feature, your domain administrator must enable it and create the list of rooms and/or resources.

Calendar

Color Coding

Some people love to organize with color. Google makes this easy. You can color code each calendar so that when you toggle them on and off, you can easily see what events go with each calendar. You can also color code each event. For instance, you could assign a color for parent teacher conferences and a different color for faculty meetings.

Calendar

As you can see, Google Calendar has the ability to assist you in organizing your events, tasks, and activities. Google also has a Calendar app for both Android and iOS that works very well with the online application. Make a goal to try at least one of these ideas and tell me what you think. Also, if you have any other ways you use the Google Calendar in your classroom, leave a comment below.

 

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homework
Content AreasGood Teaching

Help Students Focus on Homework Using Organization Techniques

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

Teachers face challenges today that no generation before them has had to address. Thanks to advances in technology, students have limitless resources at their fingertips. For example, they can find the answer to any question by asking their smartphone. However, the procedures used to get the perfect answers are mind-numbing. They often require little thought and no problem-solving techniques.

This puts teachers in a difficult situation. While you would like to take your students to the next level of learning, and their work level indicates that it is possible, you often find that the only thing the student has learned is how to use a search engine.

In order to teach students real-life problem-solving skills, you must sometimes restrict the very tools that could help them.

Where to Begin

In order to teach students to develop the tools they need to succeed in their classwork, homework, and life in general, they must learn a few simple steps. These steps are applied to everything they do. When you teach your students to look at each assignment through the guidelines of these steps, they will complete their work. They are:

  • Prepare for the work ahead.
  • Collect needed supplies.
  • Focus on the job at hand until it is complete.
  • Incorporate focus strategies used in programs like Phyzzle that help children learn how to focus on homework using super-efficient organization techniques.
  • Get the job done. Students are taught to stay with the assignment until it is finished and their materials are put away.

Make It Easy on Yourself and Parents

Teaching a child to be organized takes a little effort. Unfortunately, in the early stages, much of the effort falls on the teacher. This is where the use of technology is helpful.

  • Set up an online assignment calendar. Be specific and spell out exactly what is required. You can let the students help determine what tools they will need to complete an assignment. Be sure to send home notices to the parents advising where assignments are posted.
  • Ask parents if they would like to be included in group texts, reminding them of activities and deadlines.

Make a Homework Kit

So much time is wasted by students searching for a pencil, paper, worksheets, and assignment list. Younger students can be trained to avoid this problem. Using a large ziplock bag, help them make a homework kit. The kit always contains pencil, paper, and other items they need. During the work week (or day) homework sheets are placed in the bag along with any reading assignments. The bag then goes home with the student at the end of the day.

Five-Minute Rule

Before a student begins their homework, they should take five minutes to review what they need to do. They can use this time to organize their work and what they plan to accomplish. How they organize it, is up to them. The key is to be ready to complete their homework in one sitting.

Technology

Technology is a wonderful education tool when used properly. When abused, students can turn it into a mind-numbing, fact-finding exercise. Let your students help you keep your class-site current. Have a way for the kids to ask questions of their peers and of their instructors, and team students up as accountability partners.

Students will flourish if they work together with their teachers, parents, and technology. At the end of the day, they learn how to succeed in school, and in life.

This is a guest blog by Ashley Lipman. Lipman is a  lover of psychology whose interests range from the corporate world to self-improvement and self-care to education. Now if only someone came up with a way to extend the day by about 20 more hours, she could dedicate herself to all of these equally and constantly.

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