School Social Work Tech

Powerschool | Multi Select Tool

2017-03-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

Selecting by hand...ain't nobody got time for that

"Multi Select" is a great time-saving tool that is my new favorite Powerschool feature! I love it even more than creating groups and working with groups, which is saying a lot because groups really made life easier. I don't know when Multi Select showed up, but I sure am thankful for it.

Let me tell you why you're going to love it too...

So what does this do?

This tool allows you to select multiple students at once just by typing or pasting text. It is much faster than the Select By Hand feature which I find to be rather annoying due to the miniscule scroll box it provides. Multi Select is useful when you have a random group of students to select, especially if you only know partial first or last names. I'll explain how to use it and share a few examples of how I've found it to be helpful.

To find this feature go to the start page and click Multi Select in the options below the main search bar. It is right next to the Stored Selections button, which you're probably familiar with for working with groups.

The Multi Select tool will appear in a pop-up window with 4 search options:

Student Number
Student State ID
LastName FirstName
FirstName LastName

You'll also notice 2 check box options:

Case Insensitive (slow): Checking this box allows for additional search options which I'll explain more later.

Include Inactive Students: Checking this box makes your search results include students who are no longer actively enrolled at your school.

How to Enter Search Text

For any of the search options you choose you will utilize the big open text box to type or paste the text for your search. Enter each new student on a new line. You can type, delete, cut, paste and do just about anything else you normally would do in a text box. If you fill up the screen a scroll bar will appear. You can also click and drag the bottom right corner to make the box view larger if needed.

Student Number

The first search option is student number. One way that I have used this is to quickly select a group of students who I have saved in a spreadsheet. For example, I track attendance interventions in excel and often want to run reports in Powerschool for several students based on some criteria already saved in my spreadsheet. I can sort my spreadsheet by any criteria such as students who have received 6 day attendance letters or students whose parents I have not yet contacted. I then select and copy (Ctrl+c) the Student ID column in my spreadsheet.

Next I go to Powerschool and click on the Multi Select button as pictured above. Choose Student Number in the drop-down menu and then paste (Ctrl+v) the ID numbers that were just copied into the text box.

for this purpose I usually deselect the Include Inactive Students as I'm not interested in looking at data for students who are no longer enrolled at my school.

Click Search and wait for the magic to happen. The students you entered will now become your current selection...

Ta-da!

From here you can do anything that you might usually do with a selected group of students. For example, choose any feature under Group Functions such as print reports (including the Attendance Tracking Report) or click Save Stored Selection for a quicker way to create a group rather than through other more tedious selection methods.

Student number is just one of the selection methods that the Multi Select tool provides. Let's look at the other 3 options...

Student State ID

This refers to a student's Unique Statewide Identifier (UID) for North Carolina DPI. I suppose this may be useful if you had a UID number for a student coming from another county. I haven't used this data point myself, but you can learn more about it here. Do you know where to find a student's UID or how it is useful?

LastName FirstName

Here comes one of my favorite things about this feature. When using this selection option you can enter student names in the format above, but there is also a great deal of flexibility that helps if you want to search using multiple incomplete names. No punctuation is needed, but you still enter each child on a separate line. You can also use the wildcard symbol @ in many different ways.

Here are some examples of variations on search entries that will work just fine in the LastName FirstName option:

Howlett James
Howlett j
H James
howlett (will select all students with the last name "Howlett")
How (will select all students whose last names begin with "How")
H (will select all students whose last names begin with "H")
Ho@ (will select all students whose last names begin with "Ho" regardless of any hyphens, etc.)
@-@ (will select any student with a hyphenated last name)

To be clear just how versatile the options are, here's an example of a combination of entries and what the selection might look like:

Search box entry:

Parker Peter

batson B

W Slade

Marko

way

Mu@

Result:

Billy Batson

Cain Marko

Ororo Munroe

Matthew Murdock

Peter Parker

Jim Randall

Jaime Reyes

Reed Richards

Martha Roberts

Steven Rogers

Jack Ryder

Slade Wilson

Bruce Wayne

you can copy and paste lists of names from a spreadsheet or other document to make student selection in Powerschool as quick as a few clicks or keyboard shortcuts. This really is as great as it sounds!

FirstName LastName

Just like above you have all the same options only in reverse using this selection option. You can start with first name instead of last name, which is useful if you don't have last names and want to look up several students. Here are examples of search options you could use here:

James Howlett
J Howlett
James h
james
Jam (will select all students whose first names begin with "Jam")
J (will select all students whose first names begin with "J")
Ja@ (will select all students whose first names begin with "Ja" regardless of any hyphens, etc.)
@-@ (will select all students with a hyphenated first name)

Update Selection

Here's an extra special tip that makes these options even more flexible. What if I want to select 3 students and I know James's first name but not his last, Murdock's last name but not his first, and just the first 2 letters of Or...Oro...Ortho, what was that kid's name again?

Using FirstName LastName here's what you can enter in the search box to get what you need:

Or@

@ Murdock

James

Your selection results may likely include some other James, Murdocks, Orlandos or Orvilles that you didn't mean to select. To remove them all you need to do is click on Select By Hand then uncheck the box next to the name you want to remove and click on Update Selection.

Important Note:

When using either the LastName FirstName or FirstName LastName search option I recommend that you ALWAYS check the box Case Insensitive (slow) as this will ensure that all the creative search options you use will work. If you are positive you have the spelling just right and don't want to bother with weeding out names you didn't mean to choose, then leave the box unchecked and your selection will be just right.

To whoever created this feature I want to say a big thank you! I am so happy to see an option for selecting students that actually works the way our brains function. The reality is that when you are serving 1500+ students you might not always remember everyone's full name and you certainly don't have time for all that box checking. If you can relate I hope this tip helps save some time and brain power!

Student Attendance Audit

2014-11-11T11:32:00.001-05:00

How do I track Student Absences Over a Time Period That I Choose?

There are many situations where you might like to know the attendance numbers and totals for students for a certain week, month, or other period of time you determine. For example, if you are doing an attendance incentive group you'll want to be able to check the weekly attendance for that group each Friday. Or maybe you've created a school-wide incentive for perfect attendance for the month of September (Attendance Awareness Month!) and you need to know who gets the prize. This is the report you'll want to use.

Continue reading for instructions on how to use this report.

How to Run This Report

Before you begin you'll want to decide what group of students you need this data for. If it is for a particular grade level, alphabetical group, or a hand-picked group of students. Here are a few methods of selection to consider:

Create a group and select it. Here's more on working with a group. This could be your PLT group or any other customized group of students, such as an attendance check in group.

Select all students for a particular school (choose All at the end of the alphabet list on the start page). Make sure you choose the right school in the top right drop-down menu.

Use any of the search methods on the start page to select a certain homeroom, age, or narrow your selection by any other criteria found in the function list to the right of your search bar.

Next, choose the year or term as well as the school you want to work with by choosing from the drop-down boxes in the top right corner.

Once you have your students selected then click on System Reports on the left side-bar.

On the following reports page click on Student Attendance Audit under the Attendance section.

You'll now see the options page for the Student Attendance Audit report. Leave the Attendance Mode and Attendance Conversion tabs on Use Default setting. I'm not sure why, but if you choose daily or meeting you'll just get zeros on the report.

Next choose which students to include. I had already selected 38 students using a stored selection that I previously made, so I chose the bubble The selected 38 students only to run the report on those students.

You can also further define your report by grade level here. For example, click the boxes next to K, 1, and 2 to limit your results to only the lower grades at your school. I use this feature if I have a stored selection of a mixed-grade group of students and I only want to see a report of a certain grade level. This is easier than creating 6 different stored selections for each grade.

Finally, you need to choose the time period for which you want to see their attendance totals. You can either choose from preset reporting segments (usually set by quarters, etc.) or put in your own specific date range. Type in the beginning and ending dates or click the calendar icon if you're a more visual person. Make sure to choose the bubble to the left of the reporting segment or time period you have selected.

You can also choose to include student numbers in the report by checking this box at the bottom.

After making sure you have chosen the settings you need, click submit.

Once your report has finished running, click view to see it. You may need to click refresh to make sure the report is finished to view.

Your Finished Report

Here is what your report will look like. You'll see the student name listed on the left-hand side followed by the student number (if you checked this box).

The table shows all the dates in the range you selected. So on this example we are looking at Monday-Friday for the week of November 3-7. It indicates the number of the day as well as the day of the week with a M,T, W, H, or F.

1.00 means present

0.00 means absent

Summary Data

The Att column gives you a total number of present days for that student over the given time period. So in this example if a student has a 5.00 in this column it means they were present for the whole week.

The Memb column shows the total number of days that student could have possibly been present during the given time period. So for each child in this example it shows a 5.00. This can be particularly helpful if you're looking at a large span of time because you can subtract the Att column from the Memb column to quickly know how many absences that student had.

At the very bottom of the page you have the Grand Totals for the whole group of students by day and for the time period as a whole. This could be useful if you wanted to run this report for several different classes or grades to compare their summary attendance data over a certain time period.

That's all there is to it! I hope you find this report as useful as I have. I use it on a weekly basis when doing my attendance check in groups and it saves me so much time. I also save and email the report to the teachers of the students in my group on Thursdays so that they can review the data and let me know if there are any corrections. This way I can be sure that I reward students appropriately when they check in on Fridays. It is great for so many uses.

Average Daily Attendance

2014-04-14T16:26:00.000-04:00

How Do I Find My School's Average Daily Attendance?

Average daily attendance percentages have always been a common way to get an idea of how your school's attendance looks overall. There hasn't seemed be be any easy ways to get this data out of PowerSchool with the access that we currently have. I did some digging and found a report that seems to give this data as well as some other helpful summary numbers.

Another question I got recently was a quick way to see how many school days there have been to date. I suggested using the Class Attendance Audit report as it gives you total days in the final column. However, the Attendance Summary Report seems to be a better option to get this information. It conveniently puts the number of days included in your report at the top of the page, so if you run it on the entire school year it will count up those days for you. No need to get out your calendar!

Continue reading for instructions on how to use this report.

How to Run the Report
Begin on the start page

1. Click on System Reports on the left side-bar
2. Click on Attendance Summary by Grade. The page will look like this:

3. Leave the first 2 boxes on the Use Defaults option

4. Choose the bubble Reporting Segment or Begin Date and Ending Date depending on what time period you'd like to see data for.

*To get data for the entire year to date I chose Begin Date and Ending Date and entered the first day of school as the begin date and the current date as the end date. I left all other settings blank or on the default.

5. Click Submit

Your report should look something like this:

Disclaimer:
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the numbers you'll get in this report, but I hope they are correct! I know that our data managers have been receiving the Principal's Monthly Report (PMR) data from Information Systems rather than running this data on their own. This report usually included average daily attendance data among other pieces of information that data managers do not currently have access to obtain from PowerSchool. I have not heard anything about the Attendance Summary by Grade report being inaccurate though, so I hope the numbers you get will be helpful.

Comment if you have problems running this report or if you discover anything else great that it can do for you. I'm sure we'd all love to learn more!

Carly

PowerSchool Custom Report: Attendance Tracking Report

2014-01-15T02:13:00.001-05:00

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Are you tired of running 5 different reports and manually adding up numbers just to get the attendance totals you need? I am! There are children who need our attention and we're using our precious time scribbling down addition problems.

We need a quick method to see group attendance data on one page that is already totaled and categorized by excused vs. unexcused. I decided to take on this task today with the inspirational background noise of Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview playing on Netflix. By the way, it is a very interesting interview and he shared some wisdom that I think applies to our plight:

Humans are tool builders and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our human abilities."

-Steve Jobs

PowerSchool, like any piece of technology, is a tool that we can implement to multiply our efforts. Lets put down our calculators and let PowerSchool do the work for us. I'm pretty excited about how this turned out and hope it is helpful for you as well!

What Do I do Next?

You may need to first import this report into your Powerschool system in order to use it. There are resources at the end of this post that will walk you through how to do this.

Currently I am aware that this report is available in the following counties in NC:
Wake
Johnson

Continue reading for instructions on how to use this report, a downloadable guide, and the code to import this report into Powerschool for your county if you don't already have access to it.

Creating Custom Reports

Recently I have become interested in learning some computer coding, so this was the perfect excuse to get some practice. PowerSchool actually has a lot of flexibility in creating custom reports for all kinds of information and you can even decide how you want the report to appear when it is finished. You can find all of these options under System Reports and then Setup. I created the report I am sharing with you today using Object Reports. If you'd like to learn more about creating reports with these functions let me know. Also, if you have a report idea that you're not sure how to create or if you have any suggestions to improve this one i'd love to collaborate with you.

My intention for this report is that it will help you be able to get the information you need quickly for not only PLT projects, but also for monthly attendance committee meetings at your schools, and any other time you need to get a quick (but detailed) attendance summary for a group of students.

Attendance Tracking Report

I have saved this report under the name Attendance Tracking Report and it should be available to all schools in Wake County. You'll find it within the Print Reports function that I talked about in a previous post. To run this report you will follow the same procedure described in that guide: Powerschool Tutorial: Print Reports. I will assume that you have read these instructions and so will abbreviate them here:

1. Choose the year or term you want to work with by choosing from the

drop-down box in the top right corner.

2. Select the group of students you want to work with. This can be done by

many methods, here are a few to consider:

Create a group and select it. Here's more on working with a group. This could be your PLT group or any other customized group of students.

Select all students for a particular school (choose All at the end of the alphabet list on the start page). Make sure you choose the right school in the top right drop-down menu.

Use the Search by Grades/Attendance function under attendance to first select a subset of students that meet a certain criteria (Ex. > 6 unexcused absences) and then run this Attendance Tracking Report to get a detailed list of that group's attendance data.

Any other method of selecting students.

3. With the group selected, go to the Print Reports menu.

4. On the drop down list choose Attendance Tracking Report.

5. Click Submit.

6. Wait for report to finish and then click View to see your report.

Here's what your report should look like:

Result: You should get a print out with each child's name (Last, First) on a new row with their data following in this order:

Excused absences
Unexcused absences
Suspensions
Total absences
Excused tardies
Unexcused tardies
Total tardies
Teacher
Grade
Track
Student ID number (Powerschool number)

The report will also print the current date (when the report was run) in the top left corner along with the school year or term for which the data was generated. All data that is output will be current to when the report is run and include totals from the beginning of the selected term up to that day. If there are more children than will fit on one page (46) then they will run onto additional pages.

You can then right click to save or print the report to use for whatever you need.

Until next time I'll leave you with a few more words from Steve:

"I don't think that most of the really best people that I've worked with have worked with computers for the sake of working with computers. They work with computers because they are the medium that is best capable of transmitting some feeling that you have that you want to share with other people."

-Steve Jobs

I really like this sentiment and hope that it inspires you as well to use technology to improve your life and those around you. Here's hoping that this report leaves you with a feeling of calm because you work so hard for our students and families every day!

Downloads: Guide and Report Export

If you are a School Social Worker in a county other than Wake this report may not yet be available in Powerschool for you. Don't worry, you can fix that! You may need assistance from your school's data manager or other staff in your County as School Social Workers don't always have the access needed to import a report. If you have tried that and don't know who to ask for help, reference this list of Powerschool coordinators to find the contact for your county or LEA.

Start by downloading the Attendance Tracking Report (Export) below and then follow the import directions in the second file, Sharing Object Reports, in order to load this report into your Powerschool system. Finally, the Attendance Tracking Report (Guide) gives you step-by-step instructions for how to use this report. It contains the same information you just read in this walkthrough, but in a simpler format perfect for printing.

Powerschool | Attendance Tracking Report (Export)

Source: Carly Price | WCPSS School Social Worker

This custom object report is great for tracking attendance. It was first created for Wake County Schools, but you can import the file into Powerschools for your county with these instructions.

Download

Powerschool | Sharing Object Reports

Author: Carly Price | WCPSS School Social Worker

These instructions detail how to import an object report for your own use that someone else created or to export one you created for others to use. This is how you can import the Attendance Tracking Report into your system to use.

Download

Powerschool | Attendance Tracking Report (Guide)

Source: Carly Price | WCPSS School Social Worker

This report gives tons of great data for a list of students to quickly scan their attendance. This walkthrough gives you step-by-step directions on several uses.

Download

PowerSchool Tutorial: Print Reports

2014-01-09T15:38:00.001-05:00

Reports, Reports, and More Reports!

The Print Reports function offers many different reports that can be run on individual students or groups of students. There are several different methods to select a group of students to work with, but we’re going to focus on working with a Stored Selection. If you would like to learn how to create a saved group of students with Stored Selections, check out my previous tutorial on how to create a group as well as instructions on working with a group.

Once you have that figured out then come back here and continue reading for instructions on how to run all different kinds of reports to get the data you need.

How To Run Different Reports

We’ll start from the functions page. Remember, if you’re not sure how to get there, you can reference the post on working with a group. Make sure to select Go Function next to the saved list that you want to work with. This will take you to the functions page.

Once on the functions page you should see at the top of the page that your current selection is the number of students in your list.

Click on the Print Reports option.

You'll end up on this page:

Under the first drop down menu you’ll see many different options. I believe these reports have been made available to us by our PowerSchool administrators (the hard-working people in Technology Services) and there may be a way for data managers to add reports as well. This is something we could explore more in the future if there is capability to add other reports that would be helpful for Social Workers. How exciting!

Let’s look at some of the existing reports that are useful for a group:

Student Daily Attendance Report

Choose Student Daily Attendance Report from the drop down menu and click submit. You can adjust dates if you want to look at a certain time period or leave it on the default Current School Year to see a summary of attendance for the entire year to date.

Next you’ll see your report Queue. Wait for the job to be completed and click refresh to check if it is done.

Once the status says completed you can click view to see your report.

Each student’s attendance summary will be on a separate page. You can print these reports or save them to your computer by right clicking and choosing save or print. They will look like this:

Student Directory

Follow the same instructions to get to the Print Report screen with your saved list selected and choose Student Directory.3 in the drop down menu. You’ll have to wait for the report to finish and click view when it is complete. The report you’ll get looks something like this. Hopefully you get the idea even though it is blurred for confidentiality. This is a really handy list to have if you need to be able to reach the parents of certain students often or just like to have their information at hand.

Student ID Badges

I was pretty excited when I saw what this does! I don’t know about you, but sometimes with hundreds of kids in my brain I sometimes forget who is who. This option lets you print ID badges, which could be used for many different purposes. One reason I love this is to use as a visual reminder for myself to learn students names and faces. You can print your PLT list to help you keep track of them all :)

Choose Student ID Badges and click submit. Wait for the report to run and click view. You can save or print this file by right clicking as well. Each badge has the school code at the top, the student’s picture, their name, ID#, and grade.

Another report option, Sample - Lunch ID with Picture, gives a similar report but just has a little bit different information and layout. The pictures are 10 students per page and include their grade, teacher, lunch ID, and a barcode. I’m assuming this is meant to be used for purchasing lunch, but it could be useful for other purposes as well.

Attendance Letters

Usually this will be done by your data manager, but if you have need to run letters on your students, these options will print the respective letters with information (parents names, addresses, etc.) filled in for all selected students. You could select students by hand or use Search by Grades/Attendance to select a list of students with a certain number of absences by absence codes.

Current letter options:

15 day letter - Elementary
6 day - 1700 letter.1
TEMPLATE 25 day letter - Elementary
TEMPLATE 25 day letter - Elementary- Spanish
TEMPLATE 3 day unexcused letter - Elem, Middle, and High
TEMPLATE 6 day 1700 letter Spanish.1

Grades

There are some options here to print report cards. All the options that begin with Q1 or Q2 are in this category. For example, Q1 ES Standards Based Report Card FIFTH will give you a report of 1st quarter report cards for fifth grade for the list of students. The way this report prints is that only the students in your chosen list who are currently in that grade (fifth) will have any data on the printed report. Children in the list who are not in that grade will not have any grades filled in on the reports that output. This probably isn’t the most efficient way to print report cards for a large group of mixed grade students as you’d have to run a report for each grade individually, but could still be useful.

I hope you find some of these reports to be helpful for getting the information you need from PowerSchool and use it to more efficiently serve your students.

PowerSchool Tutorial: Working With Saved Groups

2014-01-09T15:05:00.000-05:00

What can I do with my group?

Once you have created your group there are tons of things that you can do with it. Let's go through how to get back to your Stored Selection (your saved group) so that you can get all kinds of data on these students. There is also a downloadable guide that you can save and print for later reference that details how to edit your group.

Continue reading to learn all about working with groups.

Return to Your Saved Group

First, you have to get back to your group list, which is simple to do from the home page (Start Page).

Remember: If you’re not sure how to get back to the home page, you can always click the Home Base icon.

Your group lists are saved within each of your schools. I made a list under Knightdale Elementary School by selecting it in the drop down in the top right of the screen before I created the group.

In order to return to that group I need to make sure the correct school is selected

Once you have the correct school selected, click on Stored Selections.

From the stored selections page I can see all of the saved selections I have made in the past, such as my PLT list for Knightdale ES. You’ll see there are 36 children in this group.

Accessing Group Function Options

From the Stored Selections page, click on Go Functions to be taken to a lengthy list of options:

I have yet to explore all of these functions, but you can use one by clicking the item in the list on the left that you want to use. Each item also has a short description to the right that tells a little about what it does. Several of these don’t seem to be relevant to School Social Workers, but many could be great.

I know you’re anxious to learn about them all (so am I), but i’ll just start with the few I have played around with that I think are useful. If you are curious about one you want me to look into or have figured out something useful yourself please share!

Group Functions

Click on any of the items below to go to the tutorial for this function. If you can’t click on it that means I haven’t added the tutorial yet. Check back later or subscribe to be notified when new tutorials are posted.

Enrollment Summary
Export Using Template
List Students
Print Reports
Print Mailing Labels
Quick Export
Search by Grades/Attendance
Search for Perfect Attendance
Student Schedule Report

These options are discussed in my previous post on how to create a group.

Save Stored Selection
Select Students by Hand

Middle and High School Only

I suspect that the following options may be only meant for High School and possibly Middle School use.

Since I only serve the Elementary level, I think these functions don’t really offer any useful options for me. They may be great tools if you work with Middle and High schools and probably give you different results if you try to use them with your student groups. Feel free to experiment with these options and see if they are helpful. If you find something great I’d love to hear about it!

Editing Stored Selections

There are options you can use from this page to edit, combine, and compare different saved lists. The process to correct a list if you happen to include the wrong child or need to change or add a name is overly complicated. I wish it was as easy as pressing delete, but it is a bit more tricky.

I created a handy guide that you can print and save to reference for how to edit your stored selections including how to add or remove students. You can find this guide on the downloads page or click below to download.

Powerschool | Working with Stored Selections

Source: Carly Price | WCPSS School Social Worker

This guide will walk you through how to create, edit, and find the data you need for saved groups of students in Powerschool. Stored Selections are great for keeping tabs on any hand-picked group of students you work with on a regular basis.

Download

This should get you started on doing some great things with your groups. Remember to check back for further details on how to use different functions and share any other tips you stumble upon as well!

P.S. If you want to subscribe, enter your email in the box at the top right of your screen. You'll receive email updates when I make a new post.

PowerSchool Tutorial: Create a Group

2013-12-13T14:01:00.001-05:00

This is going to make you LOVE PowerSchool!

I was so excited when my wonderful data manager at Lake Myra Elementary School showed me how to create and save a group of children in PowerSchool and I couldn't wait to share this with everyone I know!

This opens up so many great possibilities and I think there is a light at the end of the PowerSchool tunnel! Creating groups is hopefully just the beginning of the potential this database has to make our work easier instead of creating seemingly endless frustration.

So how can this help me as a School Social Worker?

Data managers already use some of these features to print letters, labels, and attendance summaries. There are many other great uses for Social Workers.

Here are a few ideas:

Save your PLT list for each school
Run attendance reports on your saved PLT list
Print attendance summaries for your PLT list
Save a list of students in an attendance group and run reports on them
Save a list of students on an "attendance watch list"
Whatever you want! (within reason)

Please comment and let me know how you see yourself using this feature. Or if you have a question about a possible use post that too and I'll consult with my data manager extraordinaire to see if we can figure it out :)

I'll be posting a few more tutorials on what to do with your list once you have created it. Subscribe to this blog and you'll get the info first!

Creating your group: A step by step guide

1. Click this icon to get to the home page.

2. Select the school you want to work with from the drop down list.

3. Click the "all" button at the end of the alphabetical list.

4. Choose "Select Students By Hand" from the drop down list.

5. Now add students to your list

Hold Control (Ctrl)
Click the student you want to add
Repeat

Continue selecting students until all the students you want on the list are selected (highlighted in grey).

Make sure that you hold Control before you click each name.

If you don't it will clear out everything you have selected.

6. Choose the bubble "Keep selected students" in the bottom left corner

7. click "Functions"

Zoomed in view: Top of Group Functions page

8. Select "Save Stored Selection"

9. Name your list

10. Click "Submit"

Congratulations! You have created a group!

You'll now see your group listed at the bottom of the screen under "Selections." There are many things we can do with the list from here. This gets you started with creating whatever lists your heart desires. Subscribe for more tutorials on what to do with your list once you have it.

Creating and Using Your Google Voice Account

2013-09-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

Get ready...this will change the way you communicate

We had a great time learning about Google Voice last week. Hopefully everyone left less confused than when they entered! This service takes some getting used to, but once you have the hang of it you'll never want to go back to regular old voicemail again.

Here's a peek into what we talked about for those who weren't able to join us:

Google Voice Presentation from Carly Price

There was one additional feature of Google Voice that we didn't talk about much and I wanted to make sure you all know about. Turning on call screening is important to make sure that our WCPSS voicemail system doesn't interfere with Google Voice, but its also a really neat feature. This allows you to have audio caller ID and choose how you want to deal with an incoming call.

How does it work?

When you pick up the call Google will say:

"Call from _____, press 1 to accept or 2 to send to voicemail"

These are your choices:

1. Accept call

(Press 1)

2. Send call to voicemail

(Press 2 and hang up)

3. Send call to voicemail and listen while caller leaves a message. They won't know you are listening.

(Press 2 and stay on the line)

3. Send call to voicemail, then decide you really DO want to answer the call after all.

(Press 2, listen to caller, then press * to answer the call)

Questions

We had some great discussion and questions from your fellow social workers on how to use this tool and other Google Apps. I love putting our ideas together to come up with new ways to use them. I'll be posting responses and tutorials related to the following questions. Subscribe to this blog so you can get emails notifying you of this information and future topics.

Google Voice

When sending group texts on Google Voice do recipients' replies go to me or to the whole group?
Can my WCPSS landline be set up to forward to my Google Voice number?
How do I access Google Voice from my iPad, tablet, or smartphone?
What are ways to quickly access my Google Voice account on my computer?
How do I install the Google Voice extension for Chrome or the add-on for Firefox?
Is there a way to change my Google Voice number if I want to?
I already have a Google Voice account on my personal Gmail account. How do I transfer this account to my new WCPSS Google Apps account?

Getting Started with Your WCPSS Google Apps Account

2013-08-29T18:59:00.003-04:00

How do I set up my GOOGLE account and why do I want to anyway?

Google Apps offers all kinds of web-based tools and resources for communication and collaboration. It is a great way to store and share information in a user-friendly format that can be accessed on the go. Basically, it's everything a social worker (or teacher, administrator, etc.) needs to organize and utilize the insane amount of information we need from day-to-day to do our jobs. Google Apps can make life much easier for you (and me!) by helping us connect in more meaningful and efficient ways.

I promise it's painless to get started, just click here.

Note: If you have ever set up a personal Google account using your WCPSS email address please watch this video to learn how to fix this conflict.

Now that you've set up your account a whole new world of technological wonders awaits! You may already be familiar with many of the tools that Google offers and together i'm sure that we can think of some really creative ways to use them. What ideas do you have?

Some of you will be joining our workshop next week to learn about Google Voice, which is a great communication tool. If you're not able to join us, but are still interested in learning more i'll be posting a tutorial soon.

Happy Googling!