Roxi Thompson

  I'm collecting data about the teachers in our district who have obtained Google for Education certifications, so I thought this would be a great time to (finally) learn how to use Data Studio. It's pretty awesome!  A few things I really like so far: Controls Adding controls makes filtering data SUPER easy. I know that filtering is possible in Sheets, but this seems so much more user-friendly. I have only tried the Drop-down list so far, so I'm curious to see how the other control work. Image Theme Extracting theme colors from an image saved me a ton of time. I usually use an add-on like ColorPick Eyedropper to match up colors. Now they're already built into the report! Displaying Checkboxes I had checkboxes on my original spreadsheet, and I really wanted to keep them on the data studio report (at least for now). However, the report was converting the checkboxes into TRUE and FALSE values. I did a quick Google search and found out that I could add special characters i...

  Sometimes teachers who reach out for support are so overwhelmed that they don't know where to start. I am working with a teacher in that situation. She knows that she would benefit from some guidance, but she isn't quite sure what her area of "greatest need" is at the moment. To help her identify a starting point, I suggested we use a strategy from Jenny Magiera called a "Gripe Jam." ( Read more about this activity here. )  I modified it a little and called it a "Challenge Jam." I created a template using Jamboard and shared it with the teacher. Then, I took her through the following steps: I had her share as many challenges as she could think of that are frustrating her right now. As she shared them, I wrote each one down on a separate sticky note. I asked her to rank the challenges from Most Frustrating to Least Frustrating. She moved sticky notes in a straight line from left to right as she identified the most frustrating problems. I asked he...