256 – It Is All About The Data

This week on WELSTech we countdown the 7 Best Data Management Tools and Tips to handle your church, school, day care or prospect list. We also share some good news about making files available in Facebook…via Dropbox.

The discussion:

Countdown time – Church and school office workers are tasked with maintaining a lot of information so Martin and Sallie share some proven tools for effective management of members, prospects and students.

7. Daycare and After School Care management

• • Procare Childcare Software (past interview)

6. Contact management

• • Microsoft Outlook
  • Gmail – Gmail Contacts for Prospect Management
  • GoldMine
  • ACT!
  • CiviCRM

5. Do-It-Yourself solutions

• • Microsoft Access
  • Salesforce.com
  • Zoho Creator

4. Spreadsheets

• • Microsoft Excel
  • Google Docs Spreadsheets

3. Online forms for data submission

• • Jotform
  • Google Forms
  • FinalWeb Forms (Video|Documentation)

2. Student information systems

• • PowerSchool
  • Infinite Campus
  • Jupiter Grades

1. Church management software

• • Comparison chart from Christian Computing Magazine
  • Shepherd’s Staff – Church 360 – ShopWELS discount info
  • IconCMO
  • Logos CMS
  • ACS Technologies

Coming up in November … 7 Best Video and Webconferencing Tools. Share your favorite tools for video creation and connecting with others.

Ministry resources:

(22:25) Prayer Notebook | Prayer Notebook Lite for iOS

News in tech:

(25:29) Stunning undersea panoramas now on Google Street View

Picks of the week:

• (26:44) Vocaroo
• Google Chat/Talk

Community feedback:

• (32:14)  Moodle on an iPad you ask? Check out the My Moodle app for iOS which allows file uploads or simply browse to the Moodle site using the Safari browser.
• From the WELSTech Diigo group we learned of
  • 19Pencils – Teacher tools
  • Symbaloo
  • Clips – a Must-Have Bible Teaching iPhone App
• Following up on past episodes …
  • Teacher Rachel Pierson from Trinity in Waukesha, WI is using KidBlog.org with her 6th grade students (Learn more on episode 251)
  • Rachel also commented on last week’s Chromebook podcast that unblocking pop-up from the Accelerated Reader testing site allows her students to take the tests on Chromebooks without a problem
  • Another follow up on that show – Jimmy Pautz tweeted a link to a “Chromebook in business” review, Life with a Chromebook – three months of love and hate in the cloud
• Martin shared a link to some exciting news for Facebook – Facebook pairs with Dropbox for an easier path to file-sharing

Coming up on WELSTech:

(45:15) Episode 257 – We continue the current WELSTech book discussion of Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds, this time looking at Chapter 2. (Release date – 10/09/12)

The featured artist:

(46:35) This week we close the podcast with the music of Koine (www.koinemusic.com | Facebook) – If God Had Not Been On Our Side

Get involved:

• Add a comment
• Send us an e-mail welstech@wels.net
• Leave us a voice mail 405-FOR-WELS (405-367-9357)
• Add to the WELSTech wiki welstechwiki.wels.net
• Contribute to the #WELSTech Twitter conversation
• Follow us on Twitter – mspriggs and salliedraper
• Share with the diigo group welstech
• Join the WELSTech community:
  • WELSTech listserve
  • WELSTech on Facebook
  • WELSTech on Google+
  • WELSTech on Pinterest