Infogram - simple data handling

I came across this interesting web-based app that streamlines the process for students to create charts that look great and can be used to present their data sets

There is an educational version of the service and a single log in using a Google account.

Use in the classroom:
This service can give students a streamlined and purpose built format that will help them present their data. Using single purpose apps like this can help streamline complex processes and help students create professional looking charts with little instruction.

Using Google Slides to link sheets and summarise data for Sites

Problem: I wanted to have live updates from a Google Form, but I didn't want to give everyone access to the raw data. This is how I solved this problem and what I would do differently next time.

I started with an active Google Form response sheet. I didn't want to mess with that sheet because it messes up the formatting especially as I will have to sort the information later. What I decided on doing was creating a second sheet that references the Response Sheet.

To do this I needed to find a way to reference the Response Sheet and merge that with =countif
If the data were on the same sheet, I would write a statement like this:

=countif("BEd (English Language) 2017")

 Unfortunately I had no idea how to reference a different sheet. I tried to find a few searches, but here's what I came up with:

=countif('Form Responses 1'!C:C,"BEd (English Language) 2017")

The title of the sheet goes inside single quotes ' ' Then after that is the range that is range I would like to reference. In this case it is response that happens to be in column C (!C:C)

With this solution, I was able to create a second sheet that would only have the data that I wanted and it looked exactly like the picture above. However, it had one horrible exception. There was a tab in the lower lefthand corner that gave everyone access to the raw data. Not good!

My next solution was to try and find a way to reference a completely different document rather than just a different sheet. To wit, I found this video:

However =importrange is itself a function and it doesn't work with =countif.
Then it hit me. I already had the second sheet that was in the format that I wanted and it already auto updates. So what I did was use =importrange on the auto updating numbers that I wanted. They looked like this:

=IMPORTRANGE("1eojwgEp282U9MeKsgq8kVQDjc7ZuI_c","Sheet2!C2")

The KEY is in double quotes and it is part of the URL address from the source file. After the comma (2nd argument) I have the location of the cell that I want.

Conclusion:
This is where I left it. It's done what I wanted and it works. More documentation can be found here
Now I have one document that I can share and keep people informed about the competition, but I don't give them access to the raw data.

Going forward:
 If I were really thinking, the answer to optimising this is in the name of the function =importRANGE. Because I've made Sheet2 look exactly like I wanted it to look on the website, I could select the whole range and it would only take one line of code instead of all those little bits.

Another way to go about it would be to is to have the summarised data to the right of all the data and that way it wouldn't require the second sheet.

My next big task is to try and find a way to identify the person who has the most books read of a particular genre. 😬

How to embed a video stored on Google Drive

This is a tutorial on how to take a video from Google Drive and embed it on a webpage or blog post. This saves you the hassle of trying to get it up on to YouTube or other formats.

Trello for collaborating educators

Trello - web-based project management software

I've been looking for a to-do list manager for a long time and it's been difficult to find one that really worked for me. I was looking for one that would allow me to break down big projects into smaller little projects. It also needed to be cross platform and work across different operating systems. I'm glad that cloud computing is at such a mature point that we can really take advantage of centralised services that allow many people to work together. 

Based on just a little bit of searching, I've found Trello.com interesting because it is visually based. This is huge for me and I love the idea that your tasks work through a process. As you do things you migrate them into different categories or "states of doneness" 

The basic platform is free and powerups can be purchased for greater flexibility.

I love that it works with everything and has a strong mobile platform.

It works with google apps, dropbox, online calendars, email and so much more. It has extensions galore on the Chrome browser as well as Outlook. 

It's going to be interesting investigating the potential of this app.

Sway ePortfolio resources

Here are some resources that I have found for using Sway as an ePortfolio:

Log in here: http://webmail.eduhk.hk/

Website support:

Introduction to Sway: https://sway.com/howtosway

ePortfolio User Guide: https://sway.com/nIZTrWfVTiD6tRjF

Video support:

Sway Tutorial: https://youtu.be/mZFnRVwgOOM

Sway ePortfolio Guide: https://youtu.be/3C6iqGz95bI

How to protect your Google Sildes and Documents when giving presentations

I recently tried to share the presentation slides from a workshop that I went to, but I found that I couldn't share or copy or do anything other than look at that slide. I had never seen these security options before, but they sure can come in handy.

With a quick search, I found this article online from G Suite Updates Blog.

There I was able to find that if you own the file, you can click on the share button and click on options

Start by clicking on the "share button" and then selecting "advanced" in the lower right of the pop-out.

Then in the "advanced" section, you will see two tick boxes on the bottom of the pop-out, just above the "done" button.

Once you've selected the box down on the bottom, your presentation will be only shareable by those who have the link to the presentation.

How to use Google Classroom @ EdUHK

For a while now our course tutors have hit a brick wall with trying to access Google Classroom so that they can collaborate with their students. The simple barrier is this: staff and students are on separate domains. The former is on a "friends" domain and the students are on an "s" domain. Google Classroom, as far as I know, only works within the same domain. So the simple fix is this. Get a student account and set up your Google Classroom there.

How do I get started?

Write an email to the OCIO Helpdesk [helpdesk@ocio.eduhk.hk]
Inform them in the email that you would like to have a student account so that you can use Google Classroom.
Fill out the form that they will provide you and have your department or faculty head sign off on the document and also get your department/faculty chop on the document.

Due to the excellent efficiency of the OCIO staff, I had my account ready to go the next day!