Tired of constantly uploading your contact logs to all of your course sections? Tired of accessing wiki’s inside your courses to log contacts? Tired of trying to remember who you contacted throughout the day using your ‘recent calls’ option on your cell phone? Tired of  just not making enough contact because logging the contact and finding the info is a pain? ME TOO!! So, here’s what we’re going to do about it: We’re going to create a process so that you’ll NEVER have to upload your contact logs to your course.  We’ll also make it so you can log your contacts quickly no matter if you’re in front of your work computer, your home computer, your laptop, or you’re just hanging out with your smartphone.  We’ll also make sure that there’s time and date information automatically provided… you know, one less thing.  Last, we’ll give it a cool GUI (that’s Graphic User Interface), so you feel cool when you’re logging contacts.  We’re going to make contacting students so easy you can look up the info, make the call, and log the contact while you’re out walking around this spring !!  Check out this video, and tell me you love me in the comments.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfn2hg5n_769nwmv6mcb

Keep in mind that this is a two-part process.  You should definitely still have your names and phone numbers in a google doc and link that doc in your smartphone too so that you have the contact info you need to make the calls.   On my new iPhone, I can just tap the phone number in my google doc, and the phone says, “Oh, hi there!  Would you like me to call this number for you automatically?”  It’s pretty sweet.  The bigger the text, the easier it is to tap the number on a touch pad phone -think large font.  Again, it’s a good idea to highlight the names of failing students that’s who you’re going to focus on and call first and most often. -Shu

Here is an excerpt from a recent ‘Lifehacker’ article:  http://m.lifehacker.com/site?t=7u-89AoI3L7wGdC0LPr0jw&sid=lifehacker

CallTrack Plots Your Calls on a Google Calendar.

“Android [only]: Google Voice tracks all your calls in a searchable list. If you can’t get down with Voice, or want even more convenient tracking, CallTrack plots all your calls, or just particular calls, on a Google Calendar of your choosing.”

This is an interesting idea where one could conceivably use an android phone to log calls on a google calendar.  I’m not certain how this would work with the contact log, but let me know if any of you play with it so that it’s a good process.  Adding notes to the call might be a pain, and I’m not sure how you’d separate personal calls from student calls without getting a phone dedicated to just calling students.  Let me know!