Free Web-Based Spreadsheets - Updated

Online Spreadsheets (UPDATED 14 June 2006)

I love spreadsheets! I use them for almost any list that I need to make. There are now three (at least) free online spreadsheet services available. (If there are others, I will add them to this posting as I hear about them.)

EditGrid is one of the first web-based spreadsheets available . By being online it allows collaboration (group work) and access from any computer (for homework assignments). It is currently FREE and any spreadsheet can be locked by its creator, made accessible to the general public or kept private, or only shared with designated registered users (e.g., a group of students). In addition, it maintains a history of changes and who made the changes. While not showing exactly what was changed (as JotSpot does for text documents), this could be used to track contributions from different students.

Very cool. I teach a spreadsheet class in the Fall semester and may give EditGrid a try!

From the website:

Now Open! EditGrid finally announced public beta! The competition is keen here, with a number of strong players, including iRows, NumSum, Numbler, and ZohoSheet. Thanks Omar for the first review! We will make EditGrid the best web spreadsheet.

• See changes in real-time when someone modifies a spreadsheet. We call it RTU (real-time update).
• Full keyboard navigation. Well, almost.
• 135 functions: SUM(), STDEV(), COUNTIF(), VOLOOKUP() etc. Full support is not far away.
• Import from and export to common formats. Including MS Excel, CSV, Gnumeric and OpenOffice.org Calc.
• Access rights for every spreadsheet. Only share yours with those you have invited.
• Cross-browser support. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+ and Mozilla FireFox 1.0+ fully supported. Coming soon: Safari.
• A nice "My Worksapce" for you to organise your spreadsheets.

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NEW: iRows.com - Another Online Spreadsheet tool with similar features to EditGrid. You can also see their developer blog.

NEW (7 June 2006): Google Spreadsheet - not quite ready for everyone, but the reviews are starting to come out. This is from ZDNet:

• Pros: easy-to-use; free; auto-save; sharing function; lots of functions available ("You won't find many calculations that you can't perform"); imports Excel and CSV files "pretty well"; supports multisheet spreadsheets.
• Cons: no print function; no visualization tools (charts, graphs); no "conditional formatting"; no statistical and analysis tools; no pivot tables; no right-mouse options; no zoom; real-time collaboration and chat feature is cool but potentially confusing.

NEW (14 June 2006): JotSpot also has an online spreadsheet called Tracker

• According to their website you can "Simply copy and paste to publish your spreadsheets as interactive web sites. It only takes 30 seconds." - Data in the spreadsheet is public or private, and can be linked to a calendar or map view. Like most JotSpot products, a limited version is free, while more functionality, spreadsheets or people requires a paid subscription. (Warning: I have found that once you pay it is not that easy to stop the subscription!)

NEW (14 June 2006): wikiCalc Beta Test

If your are a real geek (e.g., you run and manage your own server), then you might want to give wikiCalc a try, though they say it is still quite buggy. According to the wikiCalc website:

• The wikiCalc program is a web authoring tool for pages that include data that is more than just unformatted prose. It combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person editing of a wiki with the familiar visual formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet. It can be easily set up to publish to basic web server space accessed by FTP and there is no need to set up server-side programs like CGI. It can, though, run on a server and be used with nothing more than a browser on the client.\

Tags: spreadsheet, teaching, google, irows, editgrid, tools, web 2.0, education, jotspot, tracker, wikicalc

Student, Teacher & Administrator Class Tools

Here are three classroom tools that span the needs of Students, Teachers and School Administrators. These are all free to register and use.


FOR STUDENTS: MynoteIT: "The perfect tool for every student. -- mynoteIT is an extremely powerful utility for any student at any grade level. You can store all your school information in one place, and access it anywhere in the world instantly."

This is designed for middle school though university students. The core of the site is a database in which students store class notes which they can save and edit, search and bookmark, print and download, and send to their "buddies". There is a calendar for placing reminders and due dates and a Google Map mashup for locating your buddies. This would be one way to 'compartmentalize' school work from the rest of a student's online life.


FOR TEACHERS: Schoopy - Classroom Organizer, School Homepages, Useful Resources & Fun Games: "I love schoopy ...it helps me keep up with my grades and do my homework. I went from B's to A's' - Lydia - a SCHOOPY student in Maryland"

(Pronounced "skoopy," I think.) This is more for elementary through middle school teachers. The homepage has logins for Teachers and for Parents. For teachers, the site allows you to create a class homepage, a calendar, a list of assignments, document downloads, and a message board. In addition, there is a resource section where a broader group of teachers and parents can share discuss education issues and share lesson plans, and an "educational games" section designed for the kids.


FOR ADMINISTRATORS: The SchoolTool Project: SchoolTool is a project to develop a common global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source license.

This web-based tool is going beta for primary and secondary schools in North America for the 2006-2007 school year. Currently is it mostly just a school-wide calendar system (single school of school district). This summer (2006) they will roll out the tracking of student enrollment, contact and demographic information, attendance management, gradebooks, and reports. Data can be imported and exported from the system. It is all Open Source, so there is considerable potential for a growing number of features in coming years -- if it catches on.

Tags: students,student,teachers,teacher,school administrators,school,class,classroom,homepage,note taking,education,parents

Scanr.com - Scan, copy & fax with a camera phone or digital camera

Scanr.com - Scan, copy and fax with a camera phone or digital camera

After about 10 years since my first online class offering (it was an option in a lecture class), I have finally come to the point where I now teach all of my university classes online (using the WebCT-Vista class shell). If students are late on an assignment, I require some form of written proof of their reason for being late (such as a note from a doctor, or the program from a grandparent's funeral). The most common way that they get this to me is by fax, though I do tell them that it would be OK to take a digital photo and send that.

Well, Scanr.com offers a kind of hybrid photo-fax service that some students might find useful. With this free service, students can take a digital photograph (min. 1.3 megapixels) of a document and email it to Scanr.com. Scanr.com will then process the image to enhance its sharpness and contrast, and email it back to the sender as a .PDF format file that looks a lot like a good quality black and white fax. The student can then forward the email to the instructor.

There is also a "Whiteboard" format, which is intended for copying material on a white board in the same way, but which also provides a color option. Scanr.com also has a Windows Mobile 5.0 application, but I could not get it to work on my Verizon Audioxov XV6700.

Apparently they also "tags documents with extracted keywords", though I did not try that and I am not sure just what use it would be.

Of course there are other potential educational uses of this alternative fax service beyond submitting excuses for late assignments. For me personally, it would still easier to take a photo with a digital camera, process it myself, and just send that. I will grant that Scanr.com could work better for those who think more in terms of traditional "Faxing" or are uncomfortable with photo editing software.

(Actually, if the Windows Mobile 5 application worked, I could imagine myself using that from time to time.)

Tags: scan, scanning, fax, faxing, copy, copying, scanr.com, email, .pdf