Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Awesome tables!

So today I just created my first Awesome Table!  Awesome Table is a way to make a spread sheet into a table and searchable on a page in google sites.  I saw it when I went to the only intermediate workshop I found at ISTE done by John Calvert.  He demoed it as book review.  Which I already talked to our Librarian an about, and will do that in September.   However, I have been looking for a way to keep track of apps and websites that teachers and students use so others can look for apps to use in their classrooms.

I am giddy with excitement that it is starting to work.  Now I just have to get others to help populate it.  That might be the trick to get teachers to actually spend a few moments to write down some items.  I am hoping they will.  If not I will at least have a place to record my information as I work with the teachers and students.

This was easy to create. The documentation is good.  I already had a google site created so it was simple to add.  It was a matter of creating the form first, getting a few responses to start, and then following the directions on the add-on.

One thing that was difficult to decide on was when to use what filter.  If you have checkboxes in the form you want CSV for there is a drop down menu for each one.  This might get long, so I am going to spend some time on figuring out how to do it like tags.  It has been easy to change filters and just save the responses spreadsheet so that is good.  The other thing is that the links in the cells aren't transferring as links.   I haven't done much research on it yet so I am going to spend time looking at that.  But here is a picture of what the table look likes:


The other difficulty thing is the ratings only show the ratings that have been given, same with the dropdown tables.  This somewhat bothers me.  If I want to know what I don't have as well as what I do have reviews for.  

But I am excited and this is a good way to have a wonderful start to the year!