Batting Order Rotation

Thanks to this code that I borrowed, I was able to create a batting order rotator for my son's Tee Ball team.

You can see it in action here.

I can see how this might be useful for elementary classes that want to rotate line leader and class jobs frequently through the day etc. etc. and also possibly in high school for seating charts (although there's other programs for that--usually attached to your grade book program) or for lab work in science class and things of that nature.

It surely would have taken me 1000 years of study to get to those few lines of code in JavaScript to rotate an array (the ones in there with the % sign I think are the trick, if I understand what I'm looking at!).  I was doing it just fine in a spread sheet thanks to this video, however, pulling from a live spreadsheet and displaying on a web page was beyond my skills at the moment and seemed like too many steps.  Then I thought I could create an array pretty easily in JavaScript and it should be a sinch to essentially follow the same neat procedures from that youTube video to lookup the correct index for each new batter.

Case Management Documentation and GAS Part 4

I'm writing this down so I can remember why I did things the way I did when I have to go back and either fix it or make a new one somewhere else:

"The less change the better" is a simple motto for some folks. I wanted to keep the new method (my form) of getting Gen Ed feedback as similar as possible to the old method, so I kept the same wording and the same order of questions.  I simply lifted them on to a google form which will plop the answers down in a sheet that autocrat turns into a nice PDF that looks identical to the version we use now.  The output keeping the same look is only important to me so that the admin and district people who are used to seeing our forms can feel comfortable.  More important is that the "front end"--where the Gen Ed teachers look at it--looks as similar as possible.

Here's where my problem arises: I have to add some pre-filled, superfluous "questions" to the form so that autocrat will spit out the the PDFs exactly how I want them while keeping the formatting customized to each student.  Information such as student initials and case manager emails are easy for a spreadsheet to look up and calculate, however, this behind the scenes look up has to happen before the form submits to autocrat (without reworking my entire concept and workflow here).  So I will make it part of my case-manager-side script, but that means that I have about 4 extra questions hanging off the end of my Gen Ed form.

Perhaps I can find a way to make them invisible in the future, or end up reworking the entire work flow.  For now, better to make a working product before getting ahead of myself.

That's all for now.
Links:
Link to part 1
Link to previous part
Link to next part

More thoughts on automation

As I sat in the allergy office and watched the nurse enter data into my record, I immediately realized another use for autocrat in my daily work. Any time a task is repeated in the same way, I should be able to get a machine to do it. The trick is getting the information into a format the machine can use and then into a format the humans can make sense of. I might have solved half of those problems while waiting for the doctor to come.

In my job we give formal academic testing to each student every third year. There are a number of different sub-tests and even different main tests that the district likes to use. All of the tests and scoring programs I've used will spit out an electronic report in either (or both) a Word document or a rich text file (that's the .rtf extension).  I need to learn how to get a machine to parse through the text file, convert the standard scores from tab delimited text into spreadsheet data, and then run an autocrat-style mail-merge into the generic report template.  The spreadsheet could also talk to a student data information system (info dumped from SEIS?) and use the student's unique ID number to look up gender and then put in the correct gender pronoun in the tedious parts of the report--replacing the "his" for "her" is always difficult or at least time consuming.

I would leave the summary and recommendations up to the report writer, so the final document that the computer spits out cannot yet be a pdf.  Autocrat can handle that, however.

I think this would be a highly useful tool for case managers who are interested.  One benefit is that not everyone has to use this system if they don't want to.  Also, it should be quick and easy (relatively) to set up and get working now that I know a little of what I'm doing with the scripts.  The first step might be the hardest for me--making the computer parse a text document and convert.

This little project will be on the back burner until around March 2014, I think, due to some meetings coming up . . .

Notes to Self

Just a brief to do list for my class web site this month:

• I need to create the blurb that goes with my Useful Links page on my class website. Also, I need to add some more useful links from my bookmark bar so there's a few in there to start.
• I need to complete the course syllabuses for Alg 1 and Eng 10 
• get the curriculum maps from the department chairs
• Need to find the permission slips that are used in district for video recording classes (mostly for reflecting on my lessons, but there are a few projects I want to do that would require some student faces in front of the camera.)
• upload that form to website (embed as a google form?)

One of my previous goals was to include pictures with this next blog post, so here's a couple:

First is a screen shot of some summer work I've been doing:

You'll see this again soon.

Next one is a shot of all the faculty in their Master's hoods as we walked out for commencement in June at my last school.