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