If you have a web-enabled device such as an iPhone, iPod touch, Android phone, Palm Pre, or Blackberry, and your school uses Dossier to collect data about CLC implementation, you can now use your handheld device to enter observation data. Just load Dossier on your handheld to automatically load the mobile version, optimized for a small screen.
Dossier Mobile is our first attempt at a mobile-aware Stratepedia application (not counting mobile versions of our blog and Stratedirectory). It’s a work in progress–watch for us to take advantage of features available in more advanced mobile web browsers, while keeping as much backward compatibility for older devices.
Dossier is currently only available to select schools in the state of Virginia. Watch our blog for updates on when we’ll be expanding it to other regions.
I think my server updates are complete. There was a little more to be done than I expected, so please let me know if you see anything odd (particularly with Depot, Dossier, or Coaching Calendar).
Dossier, Stratepedia’s service for flexible, social data collection, is being discontinued due to insufficient use. I’ll be shutting Dossier down on Saturday when I move Depot to its new server. Everyone who may be affected by this has been notified, but if you have questions feel free to leave a comment below or e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org.
I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and personally disappointed that Dossier just didn’t work out. As you may know, this has been a personal pet project of mine for nearly ten years now, but in the time it took us to finally put something together and have people try it out, better alternatives became available. I still think there are some things the market leaders could learn from what we were trying to do with Dossier (reusable forms, social data sharing), but that’s something for another time.
Thank you to everyone who sat through me talking about or demonstrating Dossier, and for the string of programmers who helped me build my grand idea. I learned a lot along the way and hope you did, too.
Dossier alternatives
In addition to the usual for-pay online data collection services such as SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang, you might consider Google Forms, part of Google Docs. This free service lets you easily create a web-based form, embed it into e-mail or a web page, and save data, real-time, into a Google spreadsheet. You may then export that spreadsheet to your favorite analysis package. (For the record, this is what we use whenever we survey people through our blog.)
If you have your own server and would prefer to host something yourself, take a look at Lime Survey. It’s similar in some ways to Dossier, though it has a much steeper learning curve.
I’ve got to do some work on Dossier’s server this evening which may require me to shut down the site for a bit, starting around 6:00 CDT. I’ll have things back up and running as quickly as possible.
Sometime this week, I’m going to shut down the S.O.S. (that’s “Stratepedia Online Support”) section of the Learning Labs. I thought providing a level of peer support was a good idea, but it never really caught on in this case and I think confused more than it helped. Not to worry: Our Stratepedia Guidebooks are still online, and you can always e-mail your questions to us at help@stratepedia.org.
If you have any questions about this transition, drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.
In other support-related news, Amber and I are in the process of revisiting and revising the aforementioned Guidebooks to make sure they address the kinds of questions we find ourselves answering more often than not. These new Guidebooks will be rolled out as we get them done and will be available for free in both web-based and PDF formats. The latter is suitable for printing, if that’s your liking.
We’re using a great new application I found a few weeks ago called ScreenSteps. It’s great for creating how-to guides for anything to be done on a computer, and can be exported to blogs (if you’ve been following my series on Goodreads you’ve seen ScreenSteps in action), straight HTML, or PDF. I think Depot’s Guidebook will be updated to this new format within the next few weeks; other guidebooks will follow.
But that’s not all! Keep following Hello (the blog you’re reading right now) for tutorials, case studies, and anything else that might not fit within the context of our guidebooks. If you’ve got tips or success stories to share with others, let us know and we’ll showcase your work within Hello’s virtual pages.
To recap: S.O.S. is going away, the Guidebooks are staying put but will be getting a significant facelift (and PDF versions), and we want to showcase your tips and successes on our blog. Thanks!
Dossier is getting the updates I promised a few weeks ago, and also moving to a new server. I’m going to do this tomorrow, May 1. I’m planning on doing this during the day since nobody’s really using the system just yet, but if I’m wrong now’s the time to let me know. If this will conflict with your plans I’ll reschedule this for a night or weekend.
(By the way, all the changes I talked about before made it in, except for the last one. The question types changes will have to wait for a future release.)
It’s been awhile since we’ve talked about Dossier. Things are afoot: We’ve been busy adding a few features and generally cleaning up. Here’s a quick rundown of what will be available in Dossier starting sometime next week:
- The big thing first: If you use a SoC questionnaire, you can now get individual responses scored automatically, complete with the line graph. It’s very neat!
- Interface cleanup: I’m doing a few small things to tidy up the interface and (hopefully) make Dossier a little easier to use.
- Data import: You can now import (some) data from other sources (such as other online surveying tools) into an assessment in Dossier.
- Behind the scenes I hope to complete some code that will make it much easier for us to add new question types in the future.
I’m still looking for volunteers with smallish assessment groups who’d like to give Dossier a try. If you’re interested leave a comment below or drop me an e-mail.
We’re getting ready to roll out a new, really useful feature in Dossier–automated scoring of the Stages of Concern questionnaire. Just use Dossier to enter the data and access the scores.
I want to test this out with one or two small-ish groups, like one or two schools but not a whole district just yet, and definitely not a whole state. If you’re interested in trying it out, leave a comment below or e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org.
Due to some unannounced (to me, anyway) changes to the mail servers we use to send you important things like Learning Labs posting notifications and password reset help, we’ve been able to send you messages for the better part of the last few days (I’m not even sure when this started; my logs tell me nothing useful). I’ve rerouted mail to go through a different server. The problem is this is the server that AOL hates and won’t un-blacklist.
I’m going to try to find a better workaround. In the meantime:
- If you’re expecting a confirmation e-mail from the Learning Labs and you’re not getting it, e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org and I’ll confirm your account by hand.
- If you’re expecting a password reset code or Depot migration code and not getting it, e-mail me from the account you used to register and I’ll help you move forward.
- If you’re expecting notifications in the Learning Labs and not getting them, you’re probably just going to have to tie a string around your finger to check the group’s web page on a semi-regular basis. Sorry I can’t give you a better suggestion than that at the moment.
You could also try another e-mail account–for example, messages are arriving correctly to my ku.edu and mac.com accounts. If you’re on AOL and have an alternate, you might give that a try.
