More on Digital Conferring Notebooks

I've been playing for weeks with the idea of using an iPad as a digital notebook. Last week I posted about using an app called GoDocs together with a form I created in Google docs. I've been using the apps in tandem with some pleasing results. Editing Google docs with an iPad appears to be a common bugaboo among both iPad and Android users. I've spent lots of time researching and reading blog posts and help forums on the topic. And for some bizarre reason, I find that interesting. A lot of what I figured out came from trial and error. I like that I can quickly enter information on a customized form and view all my notes on a spreadsheet on my iPad. I can also sort my notes by name so I can view all my notes on one student at once. As I was making my form, I had to think about how I wanted the information displayed in the spreadsheet. Like I said, lots of trial and error. The following are screen shots of my current form as it appears on my iPad. The last screenshot is the spreadsheet that collects the information gathered by filling out the form as I confer with my students. After using my form, I'm already thinking about revisions. Playing around with Google docs forms and spreadsheets led me to even more questions. What if I wanted to create more of a portfolio for individual students? Well, Jennifer at I hablo espanglish and Linda at Teacherdance were totally right about Evernote. It is quickly becoming the basket for all my student information and has a portfolio feel. More about Evernote later in the week.

I added pull-down menus for name and reading level.

I could probably get rid of the box for date since all
the information is automatically time-stamped in
the spreadsheet.

I created "go to" pages so that  I can select an area
for improvement as part of a multiple choice question
 and go right to a page of teaching points for that
particular area.

The spreadsheet should be viewed in a list view which allows me to sort the
information by name, level, or areas of concern. This is helpful for
forming strategy groups. I can also go into the spreadsheet on my iPad
and edit any of the information in the cells.

Digital Conferring Notebook

Sometimes things just take time to figure out. I finally received my new iPad 2 right before my spring break. Prior to having an iPad in my hands, I began to play with the idea of creating a functional conferring notebook using a combination of apps. Initially, I created some forms in Google Docs and organized them in a virtual binder tool called LiveBinders. Since LiveBinders has quite a nifty iPad app, I combined the two with interesting results. It worked pretty well except that I couldn't view the far right hand regions of my spreadsheets, which didn't bother me much. Any serious examination of data collected on my spreadsheet would probably take place on my laptop anyway. Editing the form was quite buggy though and so I continued my quest for a better combination of apps. In the meantime, I checked out the Confer App, which was very cool but pretty pricey and not very visually appealing. My most recent version uses a combination of a document I created in Google Docs as my master grid. The grid contains the links to the conferring form, a spreadsheet to hold all the student data, an appointment calendar, and a student log sheet. I used an app called GoDocs to view and edit my documents on my iPad. I plan to play with it this week and continue to tweak as I go.

This is a screenshot of what my selection grid looks
like using GoDocs. As you can see, this is a work in
progress. 

Digital Conferring Notebook

Thanks to Amy Platt who wrote an awesome post on Two Writing Teachers about her digital conferring notebook. And thanks to Stacey and Ruth for providing a place to have this important conversation. I've been playing with the idea myself using Google Docs together with LiveBinders. The notebook is far from finished but my thinking was to try to create a notebook that mirrored what some of my teachers were using in their classrooms. Many teachers liked The Sisters model of having an appointment calendar as well as a class list to track conferences. They also liked the idea of being able to look at the previous conference note prior to or at the time they were conferring with the student. That is why I placed the Google Doc spreadsheet first so they could look at previous notes before tabbing over to the actual Google form. My thinking was to create a tool that could be used not just for note taking but for planning as well. I was thinking about how cool it would be to be able to provide links to additional resources that could help teachers plan strategy groups for their students. LiveBinder does have an iPad App but I haven't played with that yet. In fact, I probably won't have an iPad to try it out until late in the school year. As I said before, my LiveBinder is a work in progress and far from complete but I am willing to share if you are interested. Click on the icon below to view the binder. Be sure to view the binder in Presentation mode which is a tab located in the lower right hand corner. Any and all ideas are appreciated!

Literacy LiveBinder for Conferring