Monday 14 February 2011

Taking attendance with an iPhone

I heard about this iPhone application from a friend that has been using it for the last year. Having played with it myself, I have to admit that it seems very impressive.

You can find more information about it here: http://bit.ly/e0M9eo
It has a features list as long as my arm, but I have picked out some of my favourite features here:
    • importing a CSV file stored in your Dropbox/Attendance folder (see http://www.dropbox.com)
    • manual entry of names via virtual keyboard
  • Unlimited number of courses and students per course
    • sort students by last name or first name
    • manually re-order students to match a seating order
  • Customizable attendance statuses
    • defaults statuses: Absent,Present,Late,Excused
  • Photo support
    • take photo on iPhone
    • optionally view photos next to name while taking attendance
  • Email reports and compose emails to students
    • full spreadsheet report
    • records for a day
    • send email to all students in a course
    • send email to students who are absent on a given day
    • email individual attendance reports to each student
  • Backup your data
    • backup/restore from your Dropbox account
  • Choose random students
    • choose individual students for answering questions
    • create random groups of sizes 2-30 (and email group members to yourself)
I am a massive fan of dropbox, so to be able to send information to and from my iPhone to my desktop and have everything synced is a real bonus for me. The other thing that stands out for me is being able to put students photos with their names!! To me, this says, "Never forget a students name again!"
I will be posting again soon with a step-by-step guide (primarily for my students to follow) showing how I want students to register their information during the first class of the year.

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