#Tech teacher wanted us to get used to google sheets so. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

anytutor37-com · 4 years ago

Text

The TDSB’s rollout of online learning was an unmitigated disaster

It’s easy to forget now, but back in early March, before “Covid-19,” “14-day post-travel self-quarantine” and “expanded family bubble” entered the lexicon, the hot topic of discussion among Toronto parents was the ongoing brawl between the teachers’ unions and the education ministry and the likelihood of a complete work stoppage. Teachers, furious over Premier Doug Ford’s attempts to rein in the budget and cut the number of educators by the thousands, had staged province-wide protests, filling the Queen’s Park lawn to the edges with kids, parents and educators toting angry signs and chanting even angrier epithets. On social media, there was an all-out assault on Education Minister Stephen Lecce. Smooth-talking, sharply dressed, private-school educated and with no kids and scant work experience outside of politics, the 33-year-old Lecce became the avatar for everything the unions saw as wrong with the Ford government. For months, protesters had called for Lecce’s resignation (and sometimes his head: at one point, a mob crowded his car menacingly after he’d delivered a speech on anti-bullying).

As Torontonians headed out for March Break, the widespread expectation was that upon return, the strikes would become longer and more frequent. Teachers braced. Kids rejoiced. Parents, who were for the most part sympathetic to teachers, sighed. Then, the unthinkable: school was cancelled for two weeks following March Break due to the pandemic.

To many union members, the smooth-talking Lecce was the avatar of everything that was wrong with the Ford government

If ever there were a time to put aside differences and work together, this was it, but the relationship between the unions and the ministry was so toxic, so consumed with politics and posturing, that there was little chance for constructive collaboration, even with the well-being of kids at stake.

While the pandemic was a logistical nightmare for the ministry, it was a blessing in terms of optics and leverage. There are four teachers’ unions in Ontario—OSSTF (high school), ETFO (elementary), OECTA (Catholic) and AEFO (French)—and in an instant, all of them lost any public relations advantage they held. If teachers no longer had to go to work every day, how could they reasonably demand a pay increase and rally support for their preferred class sizes? To the surprise of no one, and to the delight and relief of Lecce, the unions abandoned their battle-ready postures and settled. The Catholic board announced a tentative agreement on March 12, and the other boards reached agreements in the following weeks.

The agreements were settlements in both senses of the word: teachers took what they could get. “We were prepared to fight on,” says OSSTF president Harvey Bischof, a former high school English teacher known for his blunt, direct manner. “The pandemic took away our ability to do so. Withdrawing service during the pandemic would have been pretty offensive to the public sentiment.”

Members of the Toronto chapter of ETFO were likewise embittered by having their hand forced by the pandemic. Their president at the time, Joy Lachica, is a union heavy, someone who revels in a good, drawn-out fight. Backing down went against her nature. “If Covid hadn’t hit, we would have pressed on,” she told me. She was sickened by what she saw as the ministry’s opportunism, which she likened to disaster capitalism. “Governments can use social situations like the pandemic to their advantage and resume their original intentions,” she said.

Few parents, of course, were interested in the finer points of educational grudges or who held the public-relations high ground. They simply needed to know when their kids were going back to school. The resounding answer from every possible source of authority was: “We don’t know.” For the moment, anyway, it seemed teaching was to be web-based. The ministry provided a paltry webpage with links to a grab bag of ministry and third-party resources: the ROM, the Aga Khan Museum, the National Ballet, Mathify (an online math program created by TVO) and the Toronto Zoo. There were also resources labelled for teachers that included printable handouts that aligned with the curriculum. The ministry’s other major contribution: a video entitled “Learn Like a Champion,” in which Lecce interviews Raptors guard Norm Powell about self-discipline and the need to remain hopeful in the face of adversity, then learns to shoot a basketball backwards.

Parents were bewildered: were they expected to manage their jobs and teach their kids, too? What they wanted was something resembling the classroom but online, a live video feed of teachers teaching students who could interact with each other, which in industry speak is called synchronous learning.

The entire system seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. One middle-school teacher who works in midtown and spoke on condition of anonymity wrote to parents immediately after March Break with a baffling update: “I have lessons at the ready, but I have been directed to hold off.” A supply teacher at a midtown school received the same directive. “We got a notice from both our administrative team and the union that basically said, ‘Don’t do anything,’ ” she said. She’s looking for a permanent job and asked me to withhold her name for fear of retribution from the board.

In late March, as it became clear a return to the classroom wasn’t imminent, the ministry issued guidelines for teachers—they should provide five hours of work a week for K to Grade 6, 10 hours a week for Grades 7 and 8, three hours per week per course for semestered high school students, and one and a half hours a week per course for non-semestered students. It seemed like progress, but no one said anything about synchronous learning. When it came to delivering the assignments and tasks, one union rep for an east-end school told her teachers over Zoom to take special care to avoid anything resembling excellence. “Don’t go above and beyond,” she said. “It could set the bar too high. If you come out with your A game, and later the ministry has its own ideas to add on, it would pile on more work for everyone.”

At the TDSB, officials were dealing with a separate headache: technology, or rather, a lack of it. As a public entity, the TDSB is required to ensure equity—that is, equal access to resources—for all students. As it became clear they would need to transition to remote learning, they had to make sure that all 250,000 students in the TDSB would have a functional and up-to-date computer with Internet access. That massive job fell to Manon Gardner, a 20-year veteran of the TDSB. She was promoted in 2018 to associate director of school operations and service excellence to lead the board’s multi-year strategic plan, which included integrating technology and ensuring digital proficiency. She knew that speed was critical, as kids left out of contact with their teachers would soon tune out altogether.

Among many obstacles, the first was that she had no idea how many kids were already set up with computers. So on March 29, Gardner emailed a short survey to all TDSB families to find out how many needed a computer and how many needed Internet access. For the 10,000 families who had no email listed with the TDSB, Gardner’s team either called or sent the survey by mail. In the end, about half of the board’s families responded—some 177,444—and of those, 60,000 needed a computer and 9,000 needed Wi-Fi. Gardner reviewed the board’s inventory, then the ministry brokered deals with Apple and Google to buy or lease new devices, at a reduced cost, to bridge the gap. Rogers provided free wireless data until the end of June to families who needed it. A handful of school caretakers gathered the devices, and 100 staff volunteers, clad in PPE, collected and shipped them to a central distribution centre, where the computers were wiped and reprogrammed. Finally, they were packaged with an instruction sheet and delivered to households across the city. Staff worked eight-hour days, weekends included. It was a massive undertaking and an impressive outcome. But the entire process stretched into June, and by the time it was done, many kids and parents had given up on school altogether.

The issues with technology didn’t end there. Once the kids were finally set up with computers, it became apparent that a quarter of the board’s teachers didn’t know how to use the TDSB-supplied online teaching software or needed a refresher.

The ministry had for a long time positioned online learning as the way of the future. For many months, Lecce pushed for two online courses as part of a high school student’s graduation requirements. Under Ford’s model, however, that implied fewer teachers, and the union, especially the high school teachers’ union, saw online learning as an existential threat. Before the pandemic, the ministry had spent $18.6 million to license online teaching software called Brightspace to Ontario school boards. But teachers found it difficult to use. Many preferred Google Meet paired with Google Classroom, and it was ultimately up to them to choose. When the pandemic arrived, only a quarter of the board’s teachers participated in the software training courses, although many teachers told me the clinics were consistently full, which suggests the lack of tech know-how was far more widespread than we know. How many of the remaining 75 per cent were already up to date on Brightspace and Google Classroom? The board told me they didn’t have that information at the ready, but one teacher I spoke to estimated that up to 30 per cent of her colleagues were uncomfortable with technology in general.

Laura Friedmann is a filmmaker and producer and a single mother of two kids aged eight and 10. She had one computer in the house and she needed it for work. She applied for two devices and got a TDSB-issued iPad for her son and a laptop for her daughter. It wasn’t until the end of April that she received them and set up Google Classroom. Until then, there was no communication from her kids’ school unless she logged into Google Classroom on her own computer, which she squeezed in between work, preparing meals and getting the kids out for some exercise. The assignments were another headache, since she had to be involved from start to finish for both her kids. She had to find the posted assignment, print it out, explain it—teach it, effectively—then take a picture of the finished assignment and upload it. There was nothing like a class—nothing live, no phone calls. Just a few hours a week of assignments, which is what the ministry prescribed. After that, she’d guiltily plop her kids down in front of Netflix until she could take them out for some fresh air. She felt she wasn’t doing anything well—work, parenting, teaching. One Monday morning, after she’d spent several long days in a row catching up on work while the kids were at her ex-husband’s for the weekend, Friedmann woke up to a house full of laundry, dirty dishes and cleaning that needed to be done. She knew homeschooling would be next. When her kids woke up and turned on the TV, she was overwhelmed with a sense of guilt, frustration and also relief. She thought, Well, I guess they’ll just do that this morning. Then she went into the bathroom, closed the door, lay down on the floor and cried.

John Dewey is considered a founding father of modern education. He was a philosopher and education reformer around the turn of the 20th century, and his ideas about pedagogy are still taught at OISE today. One of his central tenets was that the relationship between the teacher and the student is at the heart of the learning experience, and that a teacher’s job is to engage students as opposed to simply treating them as receptacles of information.

It’s not a revolutionary idea. Today’s teachers know that children do best when kids and teachers interact directly, when there is a two-way flow of information. Were Dewey advising the TDSB during a lockdown, it’s safe to surmise he would have insisted on synchronous learning so kids could see their teachers, ask questions and interact with classmates.

That’s exactly what happened in the private school system, where there was widespread adoption of synchronous learning, and, despite a few reported hiccups, the transition was quick. Of course, that system was working from several advantages: with a higher average household income, private-school kids are often already equipped with home computers and Wi-Fi. The schools have fewer students and smaller classes. They have a more favourable ratio of support staff. That’s not to say online learning went perfectly in the private system. Teachers had to come to terms with having a live feed into their homes. Of course, several hours a day of synchronous classes was too much for some kids, and their parents pulled them out. But the teachers’ focus was on keeping students engaged in learning—real, live learning, face-to-face with their teachers and classmates, right from the start of lockdown. Even if students didn’t show up, their teachers were there. They took attendance, they followed up if a student missed class. School was never treated as optional. In the public system, by contrast, synchronous learning was considered an extreme proposition. One public-school teacher told me he couldn’t be online for synchronous lessons because that would require him to “be at the same place at the same time every day.” When I asked him how that differed from working in a classroom, he said he might have to help his own child with schoolwork or drive his wife to the grocery store.

Privacy was another widely espoused concern. Union leaders claimed their members were worried that having a running camera in their home exposed them to meme-making, ridicule and more. One scenario put forward by a teacher with a toddler at home: “What if my son walked into the frame while I was broadcasting and pulled his pants down?” Bischof, the president of OSSTF, told me about a synchronous high school class being Zoom-bombed with pornographic images and “absolutely vile, racist and misogynistic comments.” As if to drive the point home, one union rep cautioned her members that if they went ahead with synchronous learning and some parent complained to the Ontario College of Teachers, ETFO wouldn’t support them.

Bischof warned against live, online classes because they could be Zoom-bombed with pornographic and racist images

Jill Haythornthwaite is a supply teacher who works part time at several schools during normal times; during the pandemic, she was unemployed, and she got sick of hearing excuses from her full-time colleagues. “I can’t believe the union is screaming about privacy issues in the middle of a pandemic. Teachers are being paid to teach. They need to teach. We’ve got 30 per cent of the general population unemployed.”

A Grade 1 teacher in the east end followed her union’s advice, which was to not do synchronous lessons, because it was the only advice she had from the union regarding live lessons. “Everyone is afraid to take a step forward,” she told me, “because what if it’s the wrong step?” She tried emailing her students homework, recorded lessons and links to web resources. She also tried teaching students some French by conversing with them over the phone. Engagement was a disaster. “They’re six-year-olds,” she said. “They can’t read instructions on a website. They’re not great on the phone.” During that time, only five students submitted work regularly, and they were the kids who were already doing well in her class.

Karen Brackley has two kids, aged six and nine, at an elementary school in midtown. Both are in French immersion. Her daughter’s Grade 1 teacher loaded snippets of PowerPoint presentations, weekly, onto Google Classroom. French immersion is designed for families whose parents don’t necessarily know French. Brackley didn’t read or speak it, and her six-year-old wasn’t reading yet. Neither could understand the presentations. Brackley told the teacher as much and received a curt reply: “We do this type of thing in class, your daughter should be able to do it.” Over the course of two months, Brackley’s son’s teacher called three times for phone conversations.

“John Dewey is rolling in his grave,” says Richard Messina. He is principal of the Lab School, a private school within the University of Toronto that serves as a laboratory for learning about child development. “In our survival mode, many teachers have needed to go backwards. Giving children the opportunity to make discoveries for themselves is so different than just telling them what the right answer is,” says Messina. “I totally understand that unions and teachers are concerned about teacher vulnerability online. But if you’re not engaged in synchronous learning experiences, then you can only be transmitting.”

The TDSB teachers who wanted to start synchronous learning on their own did so at their peril. One French-immersion teacher at an east-end school switched to synchronous right away and made herself available to chat anytime within a 12-hour window via FaceTime. She faced resentment from her colleagues and received a “cool it” message from her school’s administration, who said the teachers needed to establish a norm to avoid having one teacher go all-out when another is doing the bare minimum.

Stephanie Hammond is a teacher at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy, an all-kindergarten school of 600 in Thorncliffe Park. The thought of not being able to connect with her students weighed heavily on her. She wanted to create an interactive website full of videos of her reading stories or discussing seasonal plants and animals; to do that, she knew she’d need to collaborate with colleagues and the school’s administration. But union rules stipulated that staff meetings are allowed only once a month and no more, and that all staff must attend. “We couldn’t wait,” says Hammond. So she and her colleagues created what they called “check-ins,” which freed them up to hold more frequent and smaller meetings. Immediately after March Break, and before receiving any direction from the ministry, they learned how to construct a website. The next week, they built it. By April 6, it was up and running. It contains links to Hammond and other teachers leading classes and activities, read-along stories in English and Farsi, and the main page displays information for income assistance and technical support. Hammond tried to make it as user-friendly as possible for five-year-olds: she put up a photo of herself so her students knew where to click without having to read her name, and she made a “Talk to Ms. Hammond” button that a child could click to easily get in touch via email. Students who could access a smartphone or a computer could begin learning right after the break. For those without access to either, Hammond called families on the phone. For families who couldn’t speak English, Hammond and her colleagues used a translation device that’s free to TDSB schools and helped the families navigate the board’s process of getting a computer.

Across the city, other teachers like Hammond developed innovative ways to engage with their students, and eventually, word of that type of behaviour reached the union bosses, two of whom were still hammering out the details of their collective agreements. On March 26, the high school teachers’ union, OSSTF, made a confounding announcement: “The individual measures some of our members have taken over the past few weeks to ensure students have the materials and resources they need is a testament to their commitment to our students. But we have asked in light of developing a province-wide plan…that they be mindful not to implement anything that could run contrary to direction from their school board or forthcoming from our work with the ministry.” When I asked Bischof why they didn’t put politics aside and greenlight synchronous learning as soon as possible, he denied that politics played any role and then blamed the ministry for the delays.

After a month and a half of leaving the teaching mostly to parents, finally, on May 1, the TDSB sought feedback via an online survey to parents. What was working and what wasn’t? What kind of support did parents need? The results were no surprise. Some 53 per cent of the 39,000 respondents expressed a desire for more direct contact or instruction from teachers, either by phone or online.

School trustees then unanimously passed a motion for more synchronous learning. But it would be another three weeks—May 27, a full two months after schools closed—before the TDSB made it official. “Refined Expectations for Remote Learning: A Guide for Teachers and Designated Early Childhood Educators” was a nine-page document that recommended educators meet synchronously with their students online or on the phone for a minimum of two 15-minute periods per week.

Karen Brackley was relieved, happy that her son would be able to engage with his teacher. And that did happen—two 15-minute sessions per week, almost to the second. “The bare minimum,” Brackley said. She and her husband ended up hiring private tutors. The experience made her want to pull her kids out of the TDSB altogether, and it worsened her impression of the education system in general. She says she wasn’t alone. “I spoke to a few parents who came from other countries—Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy, France, Russia, Japan. They said our public schooling is very weak.”

The TDSB is weak, stretched thin after decades of underfunding. Over half its schools are more than 60 years old, with a $4-billion maintenance backlog—roofing issues, heating and cooling problems, foundation problems. Schools are also dealing with an insufficient supply of computers, bathrooms with ancient, unusable soap dispensers, and primary classrooms without sinks. Classrooms are crowded. And the board is constantly pleading for more money. Those problems have existed since at least 1997, when former premier Mike Harris, in an attempt to slay a massive provincial debt, legislated changes that placed education-related revenue under control of the province rather than the individual boards, who can no longer directly levy taxpayers—via property tax—to raise the money they need. As a result, the TDSB is beholden to the ministry for its funding, which it receives in grants, and the ministry leverages that power to extract what it wants from the board. Harris knew there could be an accountability problem with his model, so he pledged a public review of the formula every five years. The last one was 18 years ago. The formula is decades out of date and shortchanges the TDSB by $228 annually per high school student and $174 per elementary student. No government has fixed it. The revenue stream is too good to give up.

One teacher told me he couldn’t teach online because it required him to be at the same place at the same time every day

It took nearly two months for teachers to start synchronous learning en masse. But by that time, many students had given up on school entirely. How many is hard to tell. There was no directive from the ministry or the board or various administrations to keep track of, well, anything: how much time teachers spent teaching, or which kids were participating and for how long.

John Malloy, the TDSB’s outgoing director of education, told me it would be “very inappropriate” to keep track of how much time teachers were spending with students on synchronous learning because it would demonstrate a lack of confidence in them. “I trust our teachers,” Malloy told me. “I believe they care about kids and want to do a good job.” The board expected teachers to connect with students twice a week and respond to parents’ inquiries in a timely way, but Malloy felt it wasn’t the board’s job to enforce those expectations. “Monitoring is more effective when parent, teacher and principal connect and they work through it. Not because we set up a dynamic where we can say, ‘Teacher, you haven’t been online enough this week.’ That’s not what we would do in a classroom.”

The unions did try to figure out engagement rates: at the end of March, during a call between the OSSTF and the ministry, the OSSTF requested data about the number of students who engaged in remote learning versus students who didn’t. Effectively, they wanted the dropout rate. Nancy Naylor, the deputy minister, agreed to “take it back” to Lecce. The ministry claims it did ask school boards to gather information, but as of August, no one seemed to have that information on hand. Harvey Bischof, president of OSSTF, suspects they didn’t gather it. “If true, that’s absolutely negligent,” he says.”

And as kids were opting out, many school boards decreed that any work turned in during the lockdown couldn’t lower a student’s grades, which sapped teachers of much of their authority. One Grade 8 teacher told me that pandemic or not, his students understood their marks “didn’t really count until they were older,” which left room for those who were happy with their marks to essentially tune out. At another midtown school, an eighth-grader said “hardly any” of her classmates were turning in work. By June, in a Grade 1 French-immersion class near the Danforth, only five out of 19 students submitted work. By the end of the semester, five out of 25 Grade 11 kids in one class at an east-end school were handing in half-hearted assignments, and even fewer were attending the 15-minute Google Meet sessions, when the teachers bothered to hold them.

With no accountability to the board for what was the closest thing to attendance during remote learning, with overwhelmed parents unable to effectively monitor their kids’ schoolwork, and students guaranteed to get no worse than their pre–March Break grades, there was no incentive to do school work. Students could disappear from lessons altogether. Also, teachers lost out on crucial information—which schools had more engagement, and what they did to get it—that could help them develop best practices for the fall. Halfway through July, teachers I spoke to reported no follow-up from the ministry or the TDSB and no opportunity to provide feedback to inform their plans for September.

The response to pandemic schooling was, in a word, disastrous—for kids, for parents, for the thousands of businesses that suffered when parents had to devote their working hours to teaching rather than working. Some families were forced to choose between staying employed and tending to their kids, and many chose the latter. And often, in households with a mom and a dad, the one to stop working was mom. As we head into the fall, many moms are postponing their return to work. According to a study published in July, 32 per cent of Canadian women who lost their jobs between February and June were not actively seeking work.

Kids, of course, were affected most of all, detached from daily interaction, from advancing their skills in reading, writing and math, from developing social skills, and so much more. The impact hurts some kids more than others. Laura Friedmann, the single mom who was reduced to tears when faced with the choice of either teaching her kids or doing her day job, was never contacted by her kids’ teachers to arrange synchronous learning. She marvelled at what some double-income households were doing to fill the education gap. “I was left flying by the seat of my pants and watching what other amazing families were doing on Instagram,” she recalls. When faced with a choice between making the rent or homeschooling, the latter eventually lost out.

For the latest on Toronto during the reopening, subscribe to This City Now, check your inbox to complete your subscription

We won’t ever use your email address for anything else

Want even more Toronto Life? Follow us on social media.

“A lot of families just gave up on online learning,” says Ingrid Palmer, who works at a child development centre. Palmer also co-chairs the Inner City Community Advisory Committee, which advises the TDSB on high-need schools that receive extra funding so they can provide free meals to students, additional staff and training, and on-site medical services. Through work, she meets many families with children who are struggling with some stark realities—including kids with special needs who have lost their school-issued supports. Palmer, a single mother of three, experienced that struggle firsthand. Her 13-year-old son is on the autism spectrum, and during normal times, the TDSB assigns him a Chromebook to facilitate his in-class learning. Early in the lockdown, his teacher called to say the family would receive that computer, but it never arrived. It’s likely it was scooped up when the board collected school computers for redistribution. Palmer’s son normally gets good grades. She gave him the family PC when she wasn’t working remotely, but without his own computer or the routine of school, he lost motivation. He soon disengaged from school completely.

In her professional role, during the height of the lockdown, Palmer advised families who couldn’t juggle it all to opt out of school altogether. It was only a few months of school, and their mental health was more important than the three Rs. But in the event that there’s a second wave in the fall, she doesn’t see opting out as a viable strategy. “We need to have a better plan or these kids will be left behind. We can’t drop the ball again,” she says.

Educating kids during a pandemic—in class or online—is a challenge unlike any other. To make TDSB classrooms safe will require creativity and nimbleness. Sudden outbreaks of Covid-19 or a second wave might force kids back home. If that happens, teachers need to be empowered to teach remotely, supported with the resources to be effective, and the whole thing should be monitored carefully by the board and the ministry. That kind of success is built on trust, goodwill, innovation, flexibility and great communication—none of which were on display during the spring. It will also require increased autonomy for the boards, which remain financially beholden to the ministry. Unfortunately, the squabbling has continued over the return-to-school plan, suggesting that the chaos the TDSB experienced in spring will persist into the fall. For students, that could mean substandard education, or even no education at all.

This story appears in the September 2020 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, for just $29.95 a year, click here.

This content was originally published here.

0 notes

strangehoot · 4 years ago

Text

New Post has been published on Strange Hoot - How To’s, Reviews, Comparisons, Top 10s, & Tech Guide

New Post has been published on https://strangehoot.com/how-to-create-histogram-in-google-sheets-strange-hoot/

How to create Histogram in Google Sheets

Suppose you have a sales report for each month for a year, and you want to see how the sales performed in each month. Whether the sales were high, average, or low? Or maybe you are a teacher and want to see how many students performed exceptionally well, average or poor. Well, a histogram is an effortless way to visualize data and makes it easier to interpret the data. It is a graph that represents how data is distributed.

Histogram graphs can be plotted easily using Google sheets, which is a spreadsheet program included as part of a free, web-based software office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service.

So let’s learn how we can quickly plot these informative charts in a few minutes.

Step 1:-To create Histogram

Go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/

You will see a page like the one shown in Fig. 1 below

Fig.1

Step 2:- Open New Spreadsheet

Open a new spreadsheet by clicking on “Blank”. To understand the histogram graph plotting steps let’s take an example where there are 21 students in a class and you want to plot the histogram to see the distribution of marks of the students. Maybe you would like to divide the student in performance as High performers, Good performers, Average performance, poor performance, and very poor performance, etc. You need to copy or type all the data in a column in the blank spreadsheet as shown in Fig. 2

Fig.2

Step 3:- Setup Histogram

Once the data is put in one column in the sheet, click on the symbol for the “Insert chart” option as shown in Fig.3. One word of caution here is that you have to make sure that one of the elements in the column has been selected (represented by the blue rectangle in Fig.3.)

Fig.3

Step 4:- Insert Chart

Once you click the button for the “Insert chart” option, this will either create a histogram, if it is set as default chart or it will give an option of plotting different charts in the “Chart editor”. You can select the histogram from this list (if not set as default). This is shown in Fig. 4 below. The Chart editor has two options – Setup and Customize as shown.

Fig.4

Step 5:– Setup Histogram

Setup has many options like Chart type, Data range, X-axis, and Series as shown in Fig.4. The Chart type is “Histogram”, Data range is from A1: A22 meaning column A has been selected with rows from 1 to 22. This data range can be modified, for example, if you want to plot the histogram for the first 15 values then you can put here A1: A16. The series tab lets you choose the bar color for each series in your histogram in case if you have a histogram comparing multiple series. You will get many options to modify the Histogram based on your needs from the option “Customize” as shown in Fig.5 below. The options are namely Chart Style, Histogram, Chart and Axis Titles, Series, Legend, Horizontal axis, Vertical Axis and Gridlines, and Ticks.

Fig.5

Step 6:- Customize Histogram

Under Chart style, there are options like Background color, Font style, and Chart border color. The second option, ‘Histogram’ is important and has two further sub-options- Bucket and Outlier Percentile. These options are shown in Fig.6. Bucket size by default is set as Auto. Bucket size means how many of the data points are put in one bar of the histogram. It can be changed from 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, and 50. So for example, if you change the bucket size to 10, it will divide the marks into groups or buckets of 10 marks. This is shown in Fig.6. To group data outliers with the closest relevant bucket, the outlier percentile option could be selected.

Fig.6

Step 7:– Use Legend Option

Under the option of Chart and axis title, there are various options where you can put the title of the chart, its font style, font size, and text color, etc. The option ‘Series’ could be used if there is more than one set of datasets. With the legend option, you can put a legend on the graph and the legend can be modified for the position of legend, font, size, and color of the legend. Fig.7 shows an example legend placed on the left of the graph with font-size ‘serif’, size 24, Bold, Italics, and a red color text. The vertical and horizontal axis options help in modifying the labels of the vertical and horizontal axis. Similarly, the last option helps in putting gridlines in the graph.

Fig.7

Step 8:– Compare Data Set

Finally, if you have more than two sets of data for example Marks for 2 different subjects, it can also be plotted using the above steps. An example is shown in Fig. 8

Fig.8

As you saw plotting histograms is very simple through Google sheets. You can have some hands-on practice with the guidelines discussed above. You can decorate the histograms to represent more and relevant information and put them in your reports, assignments, and presentations.

Happy Histogram plotting!

Read: How To Merge Duplicate Contacts Using Google Contacts.

#google sheets #histogram

0 notes

sourabhdubey007 · 4 years ago

Text

How To Use Graph and Chart Plugins

Whether you’re a researcher compiling data about a local election or a teacher sharing data about the local wildlife population with your class, there are no better substitutes than charts and graphs. These visual tools turn boring, seemingly worthless data into easily-digestible information. Presenting data to your blog readers as the straight text gets boring very quickly and it takes much longer for most people to understand tables and text descriptions. If you have a lot of data, you need to get the point across in an effective way, and charts can help. Data visualization is the process of taking raw (usually numerical) data and converting them into a visual presentation. Techniques for converting raw data have existed for many decades already. It is better to add dynamic graphs that can be easier to update. There are a number of chart and graph WordPress plugins that you can install to ensure amazing looking data. This can boost sales and attract a better audience.

Best WordPress Chart Plugins :

Visualizer

With over ten thousand active installs and a 4.6-star satisfaction rating, Visualizer: Charts and Graphs is the most popular plugin in the WordPress plugin repository for creating, managing and embedding interactive charts into WordPress posts and pages. Create responsive, fully-customizable tables and charts, edit them directly on your posts with our excel-like editor or import the data from your database. When you install the plugin, you will be able to easily locate the button for Visualizer in the WordPress classic editor toolbar. If you are also using the Gutenberg plugin, you will see the option for Visualizer in the main block menu. Do make sure that the visual editor mode is turned on or else you won’t be able to see the button. You can easily upload the data for your chart or file through a CSV file through direct uploads or imports via URLs. In the pro version, you will get four extra chart types including timeline charts, combo charts, gauge charts, and candlestick charts. The best feature in the premium plugin version is the ability to design new charts from pages and posts. There are also more additional charts available as well which can add functionality, ability to edit, and creating private charts. The plugin makes use of Google Visualization API so as to add charts, which aid pass-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE types) and go-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases. Adding a chart to your site is done via the Visualizer Library, which is added under the WordPress Media Library. The data for your chart is pulled in from a CSV file, either uploaded directly or linked to online. The latter allows you to base your chart on a Google Spreadsheet, for example. The data types that are allowed include string, number, boolean, date, time date, and time of day. Once a chart is created, it is added to the post or page with a shortcode.

Features

Multiple chart types

Customizable chart displays

Can link to a spreadsheet by URL

Custom hooks

Cross-browser and cross-platform rendering

WP Charts and Graphs

WordPress Charts is one of the best plugins in its niche, with over 15,000 downloads and a 4.8 rating on WordPress.org, Many users like it for the clean designs, animations, and colorful options. However, also be aware that it hasn’t been updated for quite a while. This data visualization WordPress plugin is all set to get you going, even if you are not really tech-savvy. From your admin panel, you can create the chart that you fancy and see the live preview first before you go live. If it needs any additional tweaks, now is the time to make them happen. There are six main types of chart types that you can design: doughnut chart, polar area chart, line chart, pie chart, and radar chart. You can insert them into your post or page easily via widgets or shortcodes. All of these charts are built using HTML5. The customization options are pretty much endless, but you will have to know a little bit about coding, shortcodes, or at least adjusting the default settings. The developer has promised several appealing features in the near feature—including color pallette styling options, a revamped chart creation process, and a table chart type.

Features

On-page data editing

15 chart types – 6 from Charts.js and 12 from Google charts

Easy to import database

Automatic data synchronization by creating schedules

Animated charts

Private charts

Chart creation based on your WP posts, attachments, or pages

Instant search

Filter results based on text

Multi-column ordering

Permission feature to control viewing and editing of charts

Responsive Charts

Responsive Charts is one of the best plugins for people who want an affordable option. It lets you create seven interactive charts that will look amazing on your WordPress.org site. The charts are made through charts.js and you can make radar charts, bootstrap progress bars, doughnut chart, pie chart, bar chart, polar chart, and line chart.Responsive Charts is an affordable chart solution that lets you create seven animated chart types. Want to use Chart.js with WordPress but don’t know how? Responsive Charts got your back! HTML5 friendly and animation-powered charts for all! Select the chart type from a dropdown, specify the width and title, and customize colors any way you like. Because of Canvas (HTML5), the charts come out really well rounded and function equally smooth on any device type or size.

Features

Animated responsive charts

CSV data import

Customizable charts

Uncommon chart types (e.g. radar, progress bars)

Uber Chart

The advanced WP plugin with excellent customization, UberChart lets you create charts of different varieties. It offers 240 options for each chart and 30 options for each data set in order to create charts tailored to your specific requirements. You can export and import data with the click of a button, and the responsive design ensures that all your graphs show up on every device. Some of the chart types include- Line charts, Area charts, Bar charts, Pie charts, Doughnut charts, Bubble charts. You can also modify the charts later with a few clicks of a button, which is really great if you want to update them. You can also duplicate some charts to use them as templates for any new charts that you want to add to your WordPress site. You can import data onto the plugin using a CVS file. The best thing is that you can even copy and paste the data from an Excel or Google spreadsheet. There are a ton of styling options, including padding, margins, colors, radius length and more. A preview of your chart is displayed in the heart of the settings page. It offers general customization options to define a chart’s general behavior such as setting the size, background color, and margin, whether you want chart responsiveness or not, type and speed of animation, title and legend behavior, tooltip style, etc. This plugin is a simple way to create charts and is not very expensive, so if you need animated charts, it may be a good option for you. Using the spreadsheet editor, you can copy data to UberChart from an online spreadsheet such as Google Sheets, MS Excel, etc. and vice versa. You can also add data easily and drag rows and columns. The import and export option is also available to backup your charts in the form of XML files.

amCharts

Up next on our list is amCharts , which has over one thousand active installs and a 5 star satisfaction rating. Though less popular, this plugin has received some great reviews.amCharts is the best plugin for more advanced WordPress bloggers and users who are past the basic simple tools that other plugins provide. The plugin was developed by the charts and maps Javascript service, amcharts . Adding JavaScript Maps and Charts into a WordPress post is an invitation to annoyance. It is because WP removes all the JavaScript content. amCharts saves you from this trouble by letting you create code. Nine types of charts are available: XY chart, pie chart, sliced chart, sankey diagram, radar chart, gauge chart, chord diagram, treemap and map. In the plugin settings area, you can choose whether resources are stored remotely or locally. You can also add custom resources to the existing extensive list of Javascript libraries.

The post How To Use Graph and Chart Plugins appeared first on The Coding Bus.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2zax8AI via IFTTT

#thecodingbus

0 notes

ladystylestores · 4 years ago

Text

Snorkels, thank you notes, and Headspace – TechCrunch

Everyone is living a different pandemic right now. Your relationship with shelter-in-place mandates and social distancing can look wildly different depending on your profession, age, health and, often, privilege. It’s why a week of monotony for some of us might mean a week of madness for others. The best we can do, as exhaustion and Zoom fatigue sets in, is try to be patient, kind and thoughtful.

That’s why this week we are showcasing a number of different tech initiatives trying to tackle the stresses of specific groups, from students to nurses. Let’s get into it.

Help for interns. Major League Hacking, an edtech company that focuses on engineers, is partnering with Github to launch a summer program that is an alternative to internships. Students will spend 12 weeks working on open source projects, and get feedback from professional engineers. The students will be paid $1,000 per month.

Healthcare worker family support. Juni Learning, an online tutoring startup, launched a new initiative to support struggling families of healthcare workers. The platform is giving away $150,000 in credits for its Juni Team product. The Juni Team connects students to small groups with a live instructor to work on STEM projects. “We are hopeful that the Team Sessions will allow Juni to be able to support a greater number of students who may not necessarily need 1:1 instruction, but rather, just crave being back in a structured learning environment with new or existing friends,” the CEO Vivian Shen said in a Medium post.

Health-friendly snorkels. Doctors at hospitals all around the country teamed up to work with Google project engineers and academics from Columbia, MIT, Harvard and more to make snorkel masks into protective PPE gear for doctors. The masks are not meant to replace FDA-approved N95s, but instead can take the place of disposable N95s. Researchers took snorkels, printed breathing filters using 3-D technology and are giving the washable and reusable product to healthcare workers.

A free social media manager. Unemployment in 2020 is rivaling the Great Depression, leaving over 30 million Americans without work. That’s why SalesLoop is giving its platform, which manages social media platforms on LinkedIn, Twitter, and e-mail, for free to job seekers for three months. “The aim here is to help people who want to grow their network and be proactive about reaching out to potential hiring managers, to do so for free. Normally, our biggest customer base are recruiters – so this is sort of the reverse effect that we’re seeing now,” said John Fennessy, a director at the company.

On-demand volunteers. Mon Ami is collaborating with the city of San Francisco and Los Angeles to connect thousands of available volunteers free to do critical errands with people in need, from seniors living alone to at-risk adults and children. The volunteer management platform is backed by Cowboy Ventures, and traditionally connected college students with the elderly. During COVID-19, Mon Ami has set up volunteers one-on-one with people in need, and serves as a central hub to help cities, NGOs target more seamlessly.

Firefly tries to help. Ridesharing advertising company Firefly is providing an in-car plastic protective sheet-film to its drivers at no cost to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 exposure. The initiative is starting in San Francisco and is aimed to help independent rideshare drivers that drive for a ride-hailing company like Uber or Lyft.

Sound on. Shure, a Chicago-based headphone startup, has donated $79,000 worth of earphones to Chicago Public Schools to support students and teachers with online learning.

Thank you notes for healthcare workers. Depending on where you live, when 7 p.m. rolls around your street might be filled with cheers in solitude with your local healthcare workers. But, for those workers on shift, the cheers might be muffled from the sheer stress happening within hospitals. 6FTCloser lets anybody send a quick, personalized video at no cost to frontline workers, for them to watch on their time. The platform was founded mid-April and over 1,000 frontline workers in 40 states across America and more than nine countries have received personalized videos thanks to this service.

Headspace for a year. Unemployed Americans are eligible for a year of Headspace, a digital meditation service. The mobile app startup also offered its meditation content to any and all frontline workers. “While meditation and mindfulness can’t change our circumstances in life, it can help us change our perspective on those circumstances. And, now more than ever, that’s an incredibly powerful skill to learn,” said Rich Pierson, the CEO of Headspace, in a release.

Honorable mention. Where to shop that isn’t Amazon, Target or Walmart? A few of us on the TechCrunch team listed out a couple options to support local businesses versus big corporations. We hope you take our suggestions into consideration!

Source link

قالب وردپرس

from World Wide News https://ift.tt/3fYakor

#World Wide News

0 notes

un-enfant-immature · 4 years ago

Text

Tech for good during COVID-19: Snorkels, thank you notes, and Headspace

That’s why this week we are showcasing a number of different tech initiatives trying to tackle the stresses of specific groups, from students to nurses. Let’s get into it.

Sound on. Shure, a Chicago-based headphone startup, has donated $79,000 worth of earphones to Chicago Public Schools to support students and teachers with online learning.

#TechCrunch

0 notes

cathygeha · 5 years ago

Photo

REVIEW

48 Hour Lockdown by Carla Cassidy

Tactical Crime Division #1

Sandhurst School for Gifted and Talented is a place underprivileged highly intelligent young people are gifted with scholarships. Analise Taylor is a teacher at the school when it is invaded and soon surrounded by police. She is with three students in one classroom unsure who else is also in the school. Her job will be to keep her students safe while also trying to find a way out of the situation.

Evan Duran is a hostage negotiator for the Tactical Crime Division and when he hears Analise’s name he is ready to go immediately. Sure, he has a need to save the children but he also has history with Analise. He thought she was his forever woman until...she wasn’t.

Will the team be able to save the students? Will they break the bad guys and resolve the situation and if so, will they do it without bloodshed? Also, will Analise and Evan have a second chance and this time get it right? Perhaps ;)

What I liked:

* Analise: strong, intelligent, caring woman who did what it took to keep her students safe. She also was willing to go out on a limb to state her feelings.

* Evan: strong, intelligent, dedicated law enforcement person eager to make the right decision in negotiating the safety of those being held hostage. He is willing to, eventually, address some of his emotions and reach out for a possible HEA

* The TCD Team: want to get to know them better

* Sadie: One tough little girl

* The resolution and getting the bad guys in custody.

What I didn’t like:

* The bad guys, of course…

* That Evan and Analise wasted time apart that they could have been together

Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I like to read more in this series? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars

BLURB

48 Hour Lockdown by Carla Cassidy (on-sale March 17, 2020)

Book description: The Tactical Crime Division—TCD—is a specialized unit of the FBI.They handle the toughest cases in the most remote locations. When TCD learns of a school invasion turned lockdown, every agent is ready to engage. With children in jeopardy, the stakes couldn’t be higher. But it becomes personal for hostage negotiator agent Evan Duran when he learns Annalise Taylor is one of the captives holed up with the students in a school for the gifted. He’ll need every resource available at TCD and every ounce of his expertise to turn this disastrous situation into a rescue mission—and if he succeeds, maybe reunite with the woman he never stopped loving.

Purchase links:

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50217728-48-hour-lockdown

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Lockdown-Tactical-Crime-Division/dp/1335136398

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/48-hour-lockdown-carla-cassidy/1133889963?ean=9781335136398

Google: https://books.google.ca/books/about/48_Hour_Lockdown.html?id=DS6zDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335136398

Harlequin.com: https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781335136398_48-hour-lockdown.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQTOGlXW-c

Excerpt

Excerpt, 48 Hour Lockdown by Carla Cassidy

A new miniseries from Harlequin Intrigue.

Stopping criminal activity wherever it happens. The agents at the Tactical Crime Division are ready for anything.

More and more, federal law agencies have to mobilize to remote locations to address large-scale crime scenes and criminal activity—terror, hostage situations, kidnappings, shootings and the like. Because of the growing concerns and need for ever increasing response times to these criminal events, the Bureau created a specialized tech and tactical team, combining specialists from several active divisions—weapons, crime scene investigation, protection, negotiation, IT. Because they are a smaller unit, they are more nimble for rapid deployment and assistance to address various situations. This joint team of agents is known as the Tactical Crime Division (TCD).

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Evan Duran—Special Agent Duran is a hostage negotiator for the Tactical Crime Division, a specialized branch of the FBI.

Annalise Taylor—A teacher held hostage at a private school. She’s also Evan’s ex-lover. She’d broken his heart several years before, and now he holds her life in his hands.

Jacob Noble—Is he the leader of a charitable church or the dangerous leader of a cult?

Gretchen Noble—Jacob’s wife, who is not afraid to abuse or kill. Will she kill Annalise before she can be freed?

Hendrick Maynard—Brilliant tech agent for the Tactical Crime Division. Will he be able to get the information Evan needs or will he be destroyed by old painful memories?

Walter Cummings—Chief of police in Asheville. Would his incompetence be the death of the hostages?

***

As he drove he made a few phone calls, and he finally pulled up in front of the nondescript brick building where TCD’s offices were located. He parked, got out of his car and hurried inside. As he strode down the hallway toward the main meeting room, he could hear Director Jill Pembrook apparently still conducting the morning meeting.

The main conference room was the heart of the office. It was where assignments were handed out and situations were brainstormed. The agents sat at a long, highly glossed wooden table. On one wall was an oversize FBI logo, and opposite that was the TCD emblem. A large, digital flat screen was mounted on the far side of the room, and a tablet lay at the head of the table.

Evan burst through the door. Director Jill Pembrook looked at him in surprise. “Agent Duran, how nice of you to join us on your day off.”

The director was an attractive, stylish woman of substance with cropped steel gray hair and a penchant for dark, custom-tailored suits.

She’d been with the FBI for over forty years, and she was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Her blue eyes could be warm and friendly or they could frost a puddle of water into a sheet of ice.

“I just saw the news out of Pearson,” he stated. “I need to get there… It’s Annalise.”

There was a collective groan from some of the other agents. Evan ignored it. “I’ll need you to arrange a plane to be ready for takeoff. Also, I’ll need Hendrick’s help on this. And I’m taking Agents Brennan and Lathrop with me.”

“Call off the SEAL team, Duran is on the case, everyone,” “Agent at Large” Kane Bradshaw murmured as the three men headed for the door.

Evan ignored him. While he liked Kane okay, there were times in the past they had butted heads when Kane could sometimes be a bit of an arrogant jerk. Director Pembrook though tolerated his glib attitude. And while Kane had no official rank as an agent with the bureau, he had an extensive background with deep black ops.

Hendrick Maynard, the tech guru nodded. “You got it,” he answered without hesitation. “Heading to my desk now. I’ll send you any relevant info ASAP.”

The director narrowed her eyes, and Evan felt the frost radiating from her. “Agent Duran, you are way out of line.” She paused and continued to hold his gaze. “Ten minutes ago North Carolina state officials called for federal help…” She paused and he was wondering if he should offer to submit his resignation. “You will also take Special Agent Rogers along with the others. This is an all hands on deck situation. Rowan as usual will accompany you and provide team support.”

Rowan Cooper, an attractive woman with long dark hair who worked as a liaison between the local police departments and the TCD team members, also rose and followed the men out the door. She accompanied any crew that deployed to a different location. Her specialty was smoothing over any personality difference or turf wars among different law enforcement units on scene. But her main responsibility was arranging overnight accommodations and making sure the agents had what they needed in order to remain focused on the task at hand.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied to the director. He knew he’d overstepped boundaries by barging in, but he’d felt the need to act immediately when he’d heard about the situation… About Annalise…

“Plane leaves in twenty minutes. Now go,” Di-rector Pembrook said. To him she added, “Duran…don’t pull this kind of stunt again.”

Evan would have offered to quit after the assignment if he met any resistance from the director to him heading up the detail due to his personal connection to Annalise. Nothing was going to keep him from negotiating this hostage situation.

“Never,” Evan replied before turning to leave.

***

AUTHOR BIO

About Carla Cassidy: Carla Cassidy is a New York Times bestselling author who has written more than 125 novels for Harlequin Books. She is listed on the Romance Writer's of America Honor Roll and has won numerous awards. Carla believes the only thing better than curling up with a good book to read is sitting down at the computer with a good story to write.

#Harlequin #NetGalley #Carla Cassidy #Tactical Crime Division1 #romantic suspense #Hostage Situation

0 notes

riichardwilson · 5 years ago

Text

65 Free Tools to Help You Through the Coronavirus Pandemic

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

There are more than 10,000 coronavirus cases and more than 150 deaths in the U.S., according to the CDC. The stock market has taken a hit. Businesses are losing customers, and workers are losing jobs. It has become frightening, frustrating and even maddening.

In response to the pandemic, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan recently reminded us that we can all help each other in our own ways. He has provided K-12 educators with free access to the videoconferencing platform so students can continue learning.

Inspired, I shared an idea with Jason Feifer, editor in chief at Entrepreneur: a simple, organized list of free product and service offerings from all types of companies. Access to these powerful tools can help organizations, teams and families.

He responded quickly. “I like that. Maybe it starts as a post on Entrepreneur.com?”

Boom. Here we go:

Zoom: Free videoconferencing tools for K-through-12 schools.

Slack: Free upgrades to paid plans for teams working on coronavirus pandemic research, response or mitigation. Interested teams can email a special address to get this set up, and a consultation on how best to get started with remote collaboration.

Humu: Free nudges to anyone who wants science-backed advice for how to best work remotely, partner with colleagues who are all over the place, show appreciation for those who don’t have the flexibility to work remotely (e.g. cashiers, medical personnel).

Atlassian: Free access to Cloud products for issue-tracking and project-tracking software including Jira and Confluence. Also, free access to Trello Business Class for organizing plans is offered for one year to educators at K through 12 and higher education.

Airtable: Free use of Airtable Pro plan as a modern database for any non-political, humanitarian effort tackling COVID relief. There is no time limit. It is also planning to make the service free for students too.

PandaDoc: Free e-sign plan gives companies unlimited users, unlimited document uploads, unlimited eSignatures, and payment processing.

Wrike: Free licenses of the versatile collaborative work management platform (Professional edition) to new customers for 6 months. Current customers are able to add unlimited collaborators. Webinars and advice on remote work are both on the website.

Calendly: Free Zoom and GoToMeeting integrations for their online appointment scheduling software to help remote workers stay connected. These were previously Premium tier features and will be available through June 30. Also Free premium plan access to teams working directly on COVID-19.

Smartsheet: Free templates that can be used by other organizations to build their own coronavirus preparedness dashboard, rich with CDC documentation and other resources, and related sheets and forms.

Support.com: Free tech support to anyone working or studying remotely right now.

Bill.com: Free 90-day subscription for new customers impacted by COVID-19. The cloud-based service helps small and mid-sized businesses to automate the processing of bills, generate invoices, send/receive payments and manage their cash flows.

Workable: Free use of the new video interviewing software for all customers, and access to a library of COVID-19 response content for use by HR professionals and business leaders.

Zoho: Free suite of Remotely apps until July 1. There are 11 apps in all, including ones for online meetings, training sessions, storage, project management and everyday work (in the form of word processing, spreadsheets and presentations).

Google: Free, premium version of its workplace video chat tool until July, to help businesses and schools working remotely due to coronavirus. Those features include having up to 250 participants per call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain, and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.

Cisco: Free license for new customers of Duo Security’s two-factor authentication tool, and current customers can go above their user limit as their employees increasingly work from home. Same deal for its web security tool Umbrella and its VPN product AnyConnect, which is available until July 1. Cisco is extending services for existing customers of Webex, its video conference platform. The offer includes unlimited usage without time restriction, support for fewer than 100 participants, and toll-free dial-in.

Comcast: Free Xfinity WiFi for everyone, with hotspots available to all, including non-Xfinity subscribers. To access the service, look for the “xfinitywifi” network name in a list of hotspots.

LogMeIn: Free site-wide licensing for 3 months of its videoconferencing solution, GoToMeeting, for eligible organizations (health care providers, educational institutions, municipalities and non-profits).

Loom: Free video recording and sharing service for teachers and students at K-through-12 schools, universities and educational institutions. They have also removed the recording limit on free plans and have cut the price for Loom Pro in half.

Microsoft: Free six-month Office 365 E1 Trial, including Microsoft Teams.

Slashtop: Free 60-day licenses to its Business Access remote access software.

Discord: Free, enhanced Go Live streaming service so that it can now support 50 simultaneous users rather than 10.

EZTexting: Free emergency text alert services to schools. Receive 100,000 free outgoing text messages for six months, access to a set of coronavirus message templates, and one-on-one consulting.

Yext: Free, new site search product, Yext Answers, for a 90-day period. Eligible businesses will be able to transform their website into a search engine capable of answering consumers’ COVID-19 specific queries in real time.

Linkedin: Free 16 learning courses that provide tips on how to stay productive, build relationships when you’re not face-to-face, use virtual meeting tools and balance family and work dynamics in a healthy way.

Hootsuite: Free access for Hootsuite Professional to small businesses and nonprofits until July 1. Helping to manage social media, and stay connected with your customers and communities.

Amazon: Free online access to sponsored computer science courses in the United States. That’s intended for learners in grades 6 through 12, and teachers who are remotely teaching this age group. Parents can also access this curriculum.

Brit.co: Free DIY classes for the next one to two weeks. Use discount code “selfcare” at checkout.

Zencastr: Free Hobbyist plans will have no recording time limits or limits on the number of people in your recording. Effective through July 1.

Threads: Free access to their collaboration tools and Pro/Team plans for all users through July 1.

Expensify: Reimbursement of up to $50 for essential goods and groceries purchased on your SNAP card.

Wave: Free financial software solutions (accounting, bookkeeping, invoicing) for small businesses to help with cash flow — which becomes increasingly important during economic turmoil. In response to COVID-19, Wave has reduced paid services where possible to active customers, in an effort to provide financial relief during a time of need.

Jamm: Free audio-visual communication tool used by remote and distributed teams. You can quickly record videos or do a live call with your team. Available for 3 months.

Carto: Free visualization software for organizations fighting COVID-19.

Crowdmark: Free access to its online grading and analytics platform until May 31.

Epic: Free remote access of its reading platform to elementary educators and librarians until June 30, with no credit card required. Students may access the company’s digital library, which has 35,000-plus books, read-to-me and audiobooks, videos and quizzes. Teachers and librarians can stay connected to their students by assigning books or collections and monitoring their progress.

ClassTag: Free communication platform available to help districts and schools communicate with their families. The software sends messages through SMS, email, apps and the web and automatically translates them into one of 55 languages. The platform can also be used to post videos, assignments and other resources for students to access at home and allow users to run virtual lessons with a videoconferencing tool.

McGraw-Hill: Free resources for out-of-school learning to help K-12 teachers make the transition to remote instruction.

Scholastic: Free 5 days’ worth of content and 15 additional days is on the way.

Age of Learning: Free at-home access for families at affected schools to ABCmouse, a learning resource for ages 2 to 8.

Listenwise: Free access to the Listenwise platform that supports distance learning by allowing you to roster your students, make online customized written assignments, and assign multiple-choice autos-cored listening quizzes. This will give you and your students the ability to learn through May 31, or until your school reopens.

Peloton: Free 90-day trial of its subscription workout app as more gyms shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The fitness freebie doesn’t require a Peloton-branded bike or treadmill. Users can choose from classes such as yoga, meditation, strength training and more.

U-Haul: Free self-storage for 30 days to all college students who have been impacted by schedule changes at their universities.

TripIt: Free 6-month licenses to their Tripit Pro flight tracking service.

UrbanSitter: Free parent subscription for two months during the COVID-19 outbreak. Parents can find trusted childcare help to support them as they work from home during this period. Every sitter is background checked and UrbanSitter provides parents with as much information as possible to make informed decisions.

Dialpad: Free two months of its cloud-based phone system, Dialpad Talk Pro. This also includes videoconferences and UberConference Business.

1Password: Free business accounts for the first 6 months. Manage your workforce from anywhere, and safely share logins and other important resources with remote workers.

Vidyard: Free secure video messaging to enhance internal communications for all businesses.

Cloudfare: Free Teams products to small businesses and remote workers to operate securely and easily. This policy will continue for at least the next 6 months.

Panopto: Free three-month access to capture and distribute video content for businesses, universities, colleges and schools will enable employees and students to continue learning and working remotely.

OneLogin: Free access to the Trusted Experience Platform

for educators who are moving to a virtual learning environment in light of health concerns. The free platform, consisting of single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA) and certificate-based authentication, will deliver secure virtual experiences for all educators K through 12, colleges and universities.

SentinelLabs: Free cybersecurity platform SentinelOne Core between Monday, March 16 through Friday, May 16. SentinelOne’s cloud-based platform seamlessly scales, making it well suited to protect both businesses and employees rapidly transitioning to a work-from-home environment.

Waterfall Security: Free Remote Screen View product licenses available to customers whose vendor personnel or key employees are no longer able to travel to industrial and critical infrastructure sites. Remote Screen View sends real-time images of industrial workstations to a web server that remote vendors can access.

OneClick: Free remote access Basic Starter Package for the next three months to assist those working remotely.

8×8: Free video meetings to all users. Offers 80+ local dial-in numbers (11 toll-free) from 55+ countries and meetings of up to 50 participants without any time restrictions.

Bloomz: Free premium version of its communication service to all schools through June 30. The software allows users to communicate updates in real-time to parents and students; and share lessons, student work and feedback.

HR Acuity: Free version of its SaaS solution to help businesses manage employee issues related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. The limited edition provides employee documentation and tracking functionality that will equip businesses to monitor the people impact of the crisis. The limited edition will be available through at least July 1 to businesses with more than 100 employees.

Avid: Free, temporary licenses of creative tools to qualified media enterprise and educational customers. Starting March 16 through April 17, users who must work remotely because their facility has been closed may obtain 90-day licenses free of charge for Media Composer | Ultimate, Pro Tools, Pro Tools | Ultimate and Sibelius | Ultimate. In addition, any student of an institution who uses our products and can no longer attend school and/or access school facilities can receive a 90-day license of the same products.

TechSmith: Free licenses to TechSmith Snagit screen capture software and the TechSmith Video Review software through June 30.

BlueJeans: Free access to videoconference service to first responders and NGOs for 90-days.

Adobe: Free home access to Creative Cloud apps is available by request of students and educators until May 31. Adobe also offers free 90-day access to Adobe Connect for web conferencing until July 1.

DropBox: Free DropBox Business and HelloSign Enterprise subscriptions for a three-month period to nonprofits and NGOs that are focused on fighting COVID-19. Organizations working to stop the virus or providing relief to those impacted are encouraged to apply.

Box: Free secure file sharing and collaboration platform for 3 months. The offer is for the Business plan and includes unlimited storage, mobile access, and advanced user and security reporting.

Mailchimp: Free Standard accounts to eligible groups sending critical public health information about COVID-19 through June 30.

SurveyMonkey: Free questionnaire templates written by survey research experts to gather data/feedback from employees, customers and broader groups impacted by the coronavirus.

Salesforce: Free access to technology for emergency response teams, call centers, and care management teams for health systems affected by coronavirus.

Check back soon because we’ll keep this list updated. You can also see all links and submit new free offers here.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/65-free-tools-to-help-you-through-the-coronavirus-pandemic/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/613221212725837824

0 notes

scpie · 5 years ago

Text

65 Free Tools to Help You Through the Coronavirus Pandemic