Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital Part IV

The TechWizard's Guide to Library Magic

Written by Ms. Cummings

CiTi Library Media Specialist

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital 

Part IV

Step 1 - Create a Google Form to collect reading log data

Step 2 - Create the Public Reading Dashboard

Step 3 - create the sections of your dashboard

Step 4 - Create the Teacher Dashboard

After Steps 1-3 you will be glad to hear that the Teacher Dashboard is the easiest one to create!

That being said you have a few things to consider.  Primarily confidentiality!  I highly recommend that you double check your school's requirements for this.  I have my REAL teacher dashboard set to only those at my school can view.  REAL is in reference to my dashboard and not the shared copy with fictional data entered.  After some research about our teacher and student accounts, I find that I need to turn link sharing off so that students don't see this data.

In the library, students have a right to privacy especially when it comes to their circulation records.  The American Library Association (ALA) a national association for Libraries has posted the Library Bill of Rights. That right to privacy includes protection to the student reading logs.  As of writing this post, I have decided that I need to have the Link Sharing on the Teacher Dashboard turned off and set to share with specific people.  This means each year I will have to go in an manually add and remove people from the "shared with list".  I just don't feel comfortable with the link sharing turned on even with it set to only those at my school with the link can view.  I will have to continue to debate this and check with the technology department and my admin before making a final decision before the start of the school year.

Creating the Teacher Reading Dashboard

You will need to refer back to Step 2 - Create the Public Reading Dashboard and create a new Google Data Report and linking it to the same Google Sheet.  YOU DO NOT have to create another Google Sheet use the same one that you used for the other Dashboard.

Once you have the new report set up and you see the graph paper image

List of student data Section:

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Table - the first one 
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. The dimension will be all the ones you would like to appear on the dashboard.  I put in Date (click on edit to format the date to what you want), Email and/or First & Last Name, Book Title, Author, Genre, Rated Finished or Abandoned (I edited this to shorten it to F/A)
5. Rows per page will reflect your layout. Leave pagination on for this table.
6. Sort by TimeStamp - You will be able to click on any of the columns to sort the data by.
7. You will have to manage your space because more columns may mean that your filter boxes will have to be smaller.  You still want it to be readable.

I added a text box at the top to label this dashboard

I also added a text box to head the column of filters

The Total Books Read section:  The number that appears in the box will reflect the one or many filters that are selected.

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Scorecard - the first one that says Total
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. Metric is Book Title - click on edit after you add it- make sure count is selected.  Hard to see at times.  Hover to the left of Book Title in the Metric column and you will see it change to a pencil then click to edit
5. Now to add a filter - the best place to do this is through the menu at the top.  Click on RESOURCE and MANAGE FILTERS.  This way you can reuse the filter.  You may see the filter you created for the other dashboard (skip to # 11) if not follow the same steps to create the filter for this one.
6. Click on ADD A FILTER
7. Set filter to "INCLUDE"
8. Set Search Fields to Did you finish the book question
9. Set next field to Equal to (=)
10. Next field type in what your entry was for Finished.  Be sure to type if correctly or it won't work.  I copied and pasted mine from my Google Form.
11. Now go back to editing the scorecard down to the Filter section.  Click on ADD A FILTER and select the filter for Did you finish the book that you just created.

Filters in a box - add as many as you can.  Create them individually and place them under the "Filter Options" box.

1. When you click on Filters (3 lines) a box outline will appear just like a text box
2. I typed in the name for the filter and enlarged the font through STYLE tab.
3. The data source will be your Google Sheet
4. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
5. Dimension can be any and all of the questions you asked on your Google Form.
6. For the Data Range, you will click on the calendar icon - this will only work properly if you set each chart & filter to have the Data Range Dimension as Timestamp.
7. I have a filter for "Next Book" but it does not display on this dashboard.  I might take it out at this point.  I am undecided.
8. I think I need to go back and add the filter for Finished and Abandoned books.  The total number of books is only Finished books but the listing of books enter by students includes bot finished and abandoned books.

Arrange your Teacher Reading Dashboard the way you want to add a header too.   Turn "Embedding OFF" unless you embed it on a password protected webpage.  Remember this information is considered confidential information.  Your display should now be working.  Test it to make sure the displays change as you apply filters.  Let the teachers using it know they can print to add it to student records if needed.

Library purposes of this display:

1. A display in the library that students can look to for inspiration
2. Being able to see what books student like and don't like and their genre
3. Will influence book purchasing for the library
4. Talking points with teachers and students
5. Book recommendations - so I don't recommend a book they already have read.
6. Random awards for those that are reading - I like to give out stuff during the school year.  Mostly pens and pencils, headphones, post-its and other useful stuff.

Still to come is the student dashboard so they can see what reading logs they have turned in already.  A double check to see if they forgot to turn one in.  That is still in the works and when I get it working I will share it with everyone.

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital Part III

The TechWizard's Guide to Library Magic

Written by Ms. Cummings

CiTi Library Media Specialist

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital 

Part III

Step 1 - Create a Google Form to collect reading log data

Step 2 - Create the Public Reading Dashboard

Step 3 - create the sections of your dashboard
Step 4 - Create the Teacher Dashboard

Last time we walked through the steps of creating your dashboard file and connecting your data to it.  See Step 3 if you need to.  This time we will be working on each of the sections of the dashboard.  I highly recommend that you don't just recreate what I have created but customize it to your school's needs.  The last post already told you how to create the header for the whole dashboard.  It's simply adding a text box, resizing, an adding a color.  You will repeat this to create headers for each of your sections.  It's easier to do after you have added the section.  Once you have a section created and labeled you can group them together to make it easier to move around and resize.  From the drop-down menu for "add a chart", you can see all the different types of options you have for your dashboard.  See the image below.  Take a little time to explore and try a few out.

The Total Books Read section:

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Scorecard - the first one that says Total
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. Metric is Book Title - click on edit after you add it- make sure count is selected.  Hard to see at times.  Hover to the left of Book Title in the Metric column and you will see it change to a pencil then click to edit
5. Now to add a filter - the best place to do this is through the menu at the top.  Click on RESOURCE and MANAGE FILTERS.  This way you can reuse the filter.
6. Click on ADD A FILTER
7. Set filter to "INCLUDE"
8. Set Search Fields to Did you finish the book question
9. Set next field to Equal to (=)
10. Next field type in what your entry was for Finished.  Be sure to type if correctly or it won't work.  I copied and pasted mine from my Google Form.
11. Now go back to editing the scorecard down to the Filter section.  Click on ADD A FILTER and select the filter for Did you finish the book that you just created.

The style section lets you change the appearance of your chart.  Play around with the settings and make your own choices.

I added a text box for the section.  I find it is the easiest way to do this task.

Most Popular Books Section:

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Table - the first one 
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. Dimension is Book Title
5. Metric is Book Title - click on edit after you add it - make sure count is selected.  See above for finding that edit button.
6. Results per page should be 10 depending on your layout
7. Sort add "Rate this book" - click on the edit after you add it - you will need to select how you want to work the rating aspect.  Mine is set to sum but I may change that as I test my data.  The options are Sum, Average, Count, Count Distinct, Min, Max, Median, Standard Deviation, and Variance.  I would suggest you talk with one of your math teachers for a recommendation.  I will be having a conversation about it with my math teachers.
8. Go to the Style section and uncheck the box for "Show Pagination" unless you want it to appear.

The style section lets you change the appearance of your chart.  Play around with the settings and make your own choices.

I added a text box for the section.  I find it is the easiest way to do this task.

Popular Authors Section:

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Table - the first one 
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. Dimension is Author
5. Metric is Author - click on edit after you add it - make sure count is selected.  See "Total books read section" for finding that edit button.
6. Results per page should be 5 depending on your layout
7. Sort add "Rate this book" - click on the edit after you add it - you will need to select how you want to work the rating aspect.  Mine is set to sum but I may change that as I test my data.  The options are Sum, Average, Count, Count Distinct, Min, Max, Median, Standard Deviation, and Variance.  I would suggest you talk with one of your math teachers for a recommendation.  I will be having a conversation about it with my math teachers.
8. Add a Secondary Sort add "Author" and edit so count is selected
9. Go to the Style section and uncheck the box for "Show Pagination" unless you want it to appear.

The style section lets you change the appearance of your chart.  Play around with the settings and make your own choices.


I added a text box for the section.  I find it is the easiest way to do this task.

Popular Genre Section:

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Pie the first option
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. Dimension is Genre
5. Metric is Genre set to Count Distinct
6. Sort on Genre set to Count Distinct (not sure if this makes a difference in this part or not)
7. Interactions check the box enable sorting

The style section lets you change the appearance of your chart.  Play around with the settings and make your own choices.


I added a text box for the section.  I find it is the easiest way to do this task.

Student VS Adults Section: You may not have this section

1. You will click on "add a chart" and select Pie the second option looks like a ring
2. The data source will be your Google Sheet
3. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
4. Dimension is "Select One" or what question you used for student or adult
5. Metric is "Select One" or your question set to "count"
6. Interactions box is checked for Enable Sorting

The style section lets you change the appearance of your chart.  Play around with the settings and make your own choices.

I added a text box for the section.  I find it is the easiest way to do this task.  I also added a text box for the center of the ring "Who will win?"

Show just the data you would like using the filters below! section:

There are actually three Filters.  You will add one at a time.

1. When you click on Filters (3 lines) a box outline will appear just like a text box
2. I typed in the name for the filter
3. The data source will be your Google Sheet
4. Data Range dimension MUST be Timestamp
5. Dimension is Grade or Team
6. The Data Range you will click on the calendar icon - this will only work properly if you set each chart to have the Data Range Dimension as Timestamp.

The style section lets you change the appearance of your chart.  Play around with the settings and make your own choices.

I added a text box for the section.  I find it is the easiest way to do this task.

One last thing:

If you want to embed this on a website you will need the code and you will need to enable embedding.

1. File
2. Embed Report
3. The checkbox "Enable embedding"
4. You will need to select either embed code - New Google Sites will need this
5. Or you will select Embed URL
6. This depends on where you want to embed the display.  You can just get a link and share the link with others.

You should now have a working Reading Dashboard.  The default for updating the data is every 15 minutes.  I need to find the place to adjust the time interval and I will update this post when I have that information.

Part IV will cover the creation of the Teacher Dashboard.  

You will collect a ton of data that teachers will find useful and helps to eliminate multiple reading logs when you share the data.

Part IV

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital Part II

The TechWizard's Guide to Library Magic

Written by Ms. Cummings

CiTi Library Media Specialist

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital 

Part II

Step 1 - Create a Google Form to collect reading log data

Step 2 - Create the Public Reading Dashboard
Step 3 - create the sections of your dashboard
Step 4 - Create the Teacher Dashboard

Last blog post was about the reading log form and creating it using Google Forms.  The last step was to create the Google Sheet connected to the Google form.  If you missed that post you can view it at this LINK.  Once you have these completed, have some fun entering a couple entries using the Google Form you created.  You must have at least one entry in order to set up your dashboards!  You will be able to erase these entries when you are finished setting up and testing the two dashboards (Public and Teacher).

You will need to access the Google Data Studio.  This will automatically save to your Google My Drive.  You can move it around in My Drive BUT you cannot move this to Team Drive.  I tried and it messed with viewing and the connection to the data.  So I have left mine on Google My Drive.

You can make a copy of my Reading Dashboard but I believe it is better to start from scratch.  There are some great templates and I would highly recommend taking the time to look at some of the templates.

1. Click on + start a new report
2. On the right, you will be asked for a data source.  First time using a data source you will need to click on "Create New Data Source" you are creating a link or connection to your data source. Once you clicked find Google Sheets box and click select.  Find your Google Form Response sheet.  Note:  If your sheet has more than one tab each tab will appear separately in the list.  Click on your file then Connect in the top right corner.
3. Table representing your sheet will be shown then just click "Add to Report" in the top right corner.
4. A pop up confirming you want to make the connection appears then click on "Add to Report"
5. You will see an empty rectangle that looks like graph paper.
6. Once you are at this point if you leave the document and go back into it you will need to click on "edit" in the top right corner when you go back in.  I lost track of how many times I kept clicking and I just needed to click on the edit button.  A little frustrating.
7. Stop and take a moment or two to decide what you want your Public Reading Dashboard to look like.  You will need the questions from your Google Form and ideas.

Mine is different than the Hommocks Dashboard.  I wanted to have a title to my dashboard and that it connects to the Library.  Take some time and do some planning.  Adding a title is simple to do by adding a text box (Insert Text) and adding a fill color to the box.

This is what I have on the Library's Dashboard:

• Total Books Read (set to only include FINISHED books) I have entries for 13 books but 2 were abandoned so the total count is 11 books read.
• Popular Genre
• Popular Authors (set to order by how many times the author appears in the logs plus what rate they received)
• Most Popular Books (set to order by how many read the book and the book rating
• Students VS Adults - kind of competition for the school year.
• This last section is for filtering the data.  The default is a cumulative display of all books read but you can have the display reflect what you filtered for.  I can choose a grade level, a team or a data range.  You can also select multiple filters at one time.  The display will reflect those choices.  The Hommocks Dashboard does not have this feature.  I added this to avoid having to create dashboards for each of my grade levels.  You may not need this.  You and your teachers/admin will have access to the Teacher Dashboard.
• I do not have the display of a graph showing books read by date/month, but you can add this to yours.  There are other options based on what data you collected.

Go ahead on do some planning the next blog post will go over how to create each of these sections.

Part III

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital Part I

The TechWizard's Guide to Library Magic

Written by Ms. Cummings

CiTi Library Media Specialist

Reading Logs going digital how to and the benefits of going digital 
Part I

Step 1 - Create a Google Form to collect reading log data

Step 2 - Create the Public Reading Dashboard
Step 3 - create the sections of your dashboard
Step 4 - Create the Teacher Dashboard

This is part I of my journey to bringing a reading log into the digital age.  When my kids were younger they had to do reading logs all through elementary school and without fail they would get lost or have orange juice spilled on them and one even ended up in the bottom of the hamster cage!  Needless to say, they eventually made it to school and the teacher would stamp it and we start the process all over again.   As  School Library Media Specialist working in a K-12 Library I decided I wanted more to come from those reading logs.

My first step was to create a Google Form that provided an easy way for students and parents to enter the information.  I had to decide what data I really wanted to collect.  Your choices will depend on what data you and your teachers want to collect.

My form includes:

1. Automatically collect email address - this makes it easy to restrict access too.
2. First & Last names - with school student email address you may not need this I choose to include it in my data collection
3. Select one - student or adult - I want students to see adults are reading too, but you may not want to include this option
4. Grade - I am K-12 so I did Elementary, Middle School, and High School. Plus adult.  You can choose the grades you are working with.
5. Team - There are some teams in my schools.  Optional question.  
6. Book Title - ALL CAPS - this makes it easier for the system to match up titles.  You can go into the Google Sheet and correct any errors but all caps help limit the need to make corrections.  The program will count a title in all caps as different than the same title but in lower case letters. 
7. Author - at least the last name
8. Genre - I set up options for the genre and included "I can't decide" option.  You can leave this as a short answer but I don't recommend that. for the same reason as the title.  Spelling errors will cause problems so it is easier to have them select from a list
9. Abandoned or Finished - This is important to me in that all reading counts and it tells me that the student didn't like something about the book.  This helps with book recommendations and possibly tell you when a class needs a lesson on picking out just right books.  I will show you how to set it up so only finished books are counted in "Total books read".
10. Rate this book - I put in a 1-5 scale for rating the book.  This will help with the popular author and popular book part of the display
11. What is the next book you would like to read? - This doesn't appear in the display but its data I would like to have.  I have told students that they can put that they don't know what to read next.  This is also an optional question.

I had gotten this far into my creation of the Digital Reading Log and honestly, I did not really know where to go from this point.  I attended a PD on young adult books and the presenter mentioned a reading dashboard.  I got the links and viewed what they had created.  This is the link to the YouTube video Creating a Digital Independent Reading Log with G Suite Apps https://youtu.be/ASHSGiyCE68

There is also an article about the reading dashboard at this link

Honestly viewing the video and article did help get me to move forward with reading dashboard but there was so much that I struggled to figure out.

This is a lot of information to collect and you don't have to have all these items, but this data collection will provide the data for 2 to 3 dashboards.  The first and primary one is the Public Reading Dashboard.  Secondly, there is the Teacher Reading Dashboard and last, there is the Student Dashboard.  The Student Dashboard I am still working on and I will add a post for that one when I have it working.

Go ahead and create your own Google Form Reading Log and the Google Sheet to collect the data.  The sheet is created by clicking on the green box on the RESPONSES tab of the Google Form you created.  You will need this for the next part of this project.  Having the finalized form before you start the next step will be helpful, but there is a way to manage if a need to edit the Google Form occurs.  I will include tips to help you deal with those issues in the next posts.

Part II