IT Ideas

Annotated seating plans have been something we have been working on for a while and I've just about got there in terms of functionality. This has been a combined effort between several members of staff and myself, with getting the data off SIMS (our MIS) in a sensible format being the most challenging aspect. It looks like: The system basically does the following: User makes a copy of a central sheet. Selects a class Data auto populates and updates periodically User arranges students in a grid So as little end user (teacher) setup as possible required. Broadly speaking this now works. The issues that do arise come from the inability of SIMS to extract all the data we require in one report. We use 8 reports in total with then need merging into one central data sheet. The following two videos look at the inner workings of the seating plan sheet and the backend datasheet. So it's not perfect, but for most classes it works fine now. Updating the ba...

We have be using Ericom AccessNow and Secure Gateway for a while to give access to Windows Apps on ChromeOS and also to allow off site access. The latest version has a revised user interface and a clearer look. Brief demo below:

This is a brief demo of a system I've been playing with to replace a commercial contact system we currently use. Still in the testing phase - but might work quite well for a small to medium sized school using Google Apps. I'll update this once we have tried it with real parents and see how well (or not!) it actually work.

Draftback allows you to playback the revisions of a Google Document. It also allows you to analysis when a document was edited, who edited it and for how long. Useful for looking in detail at how a student has created a piece of work over a period of time. Get the extension here . Demo on one of my docs:

In this guide, I'll look at how to automatically provision all your Google Classrooms for your school based on data held in SIMS (the most common UK MIS). To carry out the following you need to be a super admin on your Google Apps domain. The end result will be the creation of a Google Classroom for each class in the school, pre-populated with a lead teacher and students. Step 1 - Create a SIMS report to pull off all students and the classes they take. You will need a report that contains the student forename, surname, Google Apps email and all the classes they take. So a pre-requisite is to have all your Google usernames on SIMS. The fields I use are shown below: Upload the resulting spreadsheet and convert to a Google Sheet.  Step 2 - Create a SIMS report to pull off all teachers and the classes they teach. You will need a report that contains work email, full name, class name and subject of the class. See my report below: In excel - use the 'remove duplicate...

New YouTube controls have recently been added to the Google Apps Admin console. Below is a brief video guide on how to use them and what they look like in practice.

Workspace is a new feature of Teacher Dashboard that has been released into public beta in the last few days. I've just loaded most of our classes and students into Teacher Dashboard for the coming academic year and have spent a little time seeing what it can do. It essentially bring in the assignment setting of Google Classroom into Teacher Dashboard and the ability to build courses which you can use year after year. Demo video below: If you have access to it, there is a feedback bar on each page to put in suggestions. A few observations so far: I've noticed that from the students point of view it creates a folder called 'Workspace' and in that a folder for each Workspace the student becomes a member of. Now as Teacher Dashboard creates a subject folder for each subject, then I'd like the Workspace folders to appear in the associated subject folders. Would make the integration with Teacher Dashboard a bit more seamless. However, I can imagine how this migh...