Comments on: Template Ideas, Please!

By: Florian

Florian — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:57:08 +0000

Lauren,
sure it’s possible. Sounds simple enough. I had offered Rick an iChat session to get him started. But he hasn’t gotten back to me. I can offer the same to you. Just email me.

By: Lauren McCulley

Lauren McCulley — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 04:26:48 +0000

Hi All,

I am a Speech-Pathologist in the schools as well and have been racking my brain to find a new data collection system utilizing my new iPad. I am completely new to filemaker and Bento but Rick’s post describes exactly what I’m looking for. If it’s possible then I would definitely buy Bento!

Any guidance would be so appreciated!

Lauren McCulley

By: Florian

Florian — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:06:23 +0000

Rick,

I emailed you about this.

By: Rick Marcus

Rick Marcus — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 15:29:56 +0000

I am a school speech-language pathologist. I’m looking for a way to track therapy data collection on my Bento for iPad 2 that I can sync to my Mac and convert to progress reports for parents at the end of each 9-week quarter. I have the iPad app & the desktop version, of course. Typically, I am tracking progress on 4 to 6 objectives for each student (but it can go up to 8 objectives). Those objectives are for one goal or spread out over two goals.

The 4 goals I work on are articulation, language, communication, and social skills. Some students are working on one goal area, i.e., articulation. Some kids are working on 2 areas, i.e., articulation AND language. For each goal area, there can be up to 4 objectives. Objectives are “customized” according to student needs ( r, s, th sounds, etc. for articulation; analogies, sequencing, inferencing, etc. for language). To simplify things, since the students’ plans specify Goal: Articulation, Objective 1: vocalic /r/, etc., I don’t think I would need to spell out what each individual objective is.

During any one 30-minute therapy session, I will at most work on up to 5 objectives (which I want to call “targets” , e.g., 2 articulation objectives and 3 language objectives.

I evaluate therapy performance in the following ways: 1) I keep track of whether the first response is correct or not. I then ask a varying number of questions (typically in the range of 5 to 10 questions). Other than the first response as mentioned, however, I am NOT looking for a way to track each subsequent individual response. For my purposes, I want to assign an overall rating of 1 to 5 (1 = fewer than 20% correct responses to 5 = all or nearly all correct responses) to performance on each objective.

I typically have 60-80 kids on my caseload. Therapy groups are 1 to 4 students during 30-minute sessions, once or twice a week. The school year is divided into 4 9-week periods. I send progress reports home at the end of each 9-week period. An objective is considered met when a level of 80% is achieved over 3 consecutive sessions.

It would be very helpful to be able to group students according to their therapy times, i.e., Mondays and Thursdays from 8:30-9:00 so I can find student records and enter information quickly. Of course, given 10 therapy sessions per day X 5 days, that means there could be up to 50 sessions per week. Also, I am assigned to 4 different schools, and it would be convenient to have students grouped by school, too. Perhaps 1 library per school?).

Fields needed:
Name of Student (up to 80 students)
Date of Session
Goal (one of 4 areas: articulation, language, communication, social skills)
Target (Obj 1, Obj 2, Obj 3, Obj 4)
1st response (checkbox, checked = correct)
Performance (5-point rating scale, 1 = nearly all answers incorrect, 5 = nearly all correct)

Repeat up to 4 times.

Finally, I’d like to be able to determine percentage of correct 1st responses over the course of the 9-week period AND an average “rating” over the 9-week period.

Zowie! I had figured out how to create the different fields I wanted, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to tie them all together according to school, therapy groups and averages of 1st response data and performance rating on each objective. I don’t need to average performance across objectives or tie any individual objectives to each other.

Any help on this would be much appreciated . . . and shared with my fellow 45 speech therapists (all of whom are getting iPads when school starts in a couple weeks!)

Regards,
Rick Marcus

By: Florian

Florian — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:28:44 +0000

Jonnee,
I emailed you. Sorry I spelled your name wrong in the email…

By: Jonnee Kohler

Jonnee Kohler — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:49:51 +0000

I am a new owner of one rental property which of course is over priced and requires work to bring it up to code. I need a way to keep track of all my info on Furnace bids, Paint colors, Lead abatement procedures, new windows, insulation by wall, room and attic, a grid of the parts of the house and a live button to bring up details. Pictures of the problems and of the solution drawings and end results
contacts and copies of deeds and titles going back

By: Florian

Florian — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:17:49 +0000

Hi Conrad,
Bento doesn’t do reports; it’s an often requested feature. The only way to get something onto your desktop is by exporting your data as a spreadsheet (csv file). Then you can use OS X’s Quick View to see the data. But that can’t be done automatically.
You could post your request at the Bento forums, those guys have creative suggestions sometimes…

By: Conrad Wildsmith

Conrad Wildsmith — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 06:04:49 +0000

I am the head of a relatively small school in the U.S. I am using Bento fairly successfully to track student information. What I would like to do is find a way to have 2-3 different lists of students from Bento at my fingertips all the time. I want these lists to be created and organized according to different types of data like attendance, behavior incidents, assessment results etc…, so that I have on my desktop current lists of students that I am paying special attention to. For example, if we give a common assessment to all of the first graders, I would like a report on my desktop sorted according to the lowest 10 student scores. Is there a way to pull sorted data from records and keep it updated on my desktop. I just figured out how to use smart collections and want to take this a step further.

By: Florian

Florian — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:10:44 +0000

Ed,

yes, that’s a simple task for Bento.

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:33:08 +0000

Is there any way to use Bento just to create simple invoices? ie if I see a client 2-3 times per month at $100 each time and want to print out an invoice, could I do so? I’d rather not pay $$$ for Filemaker Pro; must be a way just to do this in Bento? (would also like to track total annual revenue from clients). Thx

By: Florian

Florian — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:14:03 +0000

Ben,
iCal Events has those three fields built in (Start Time, End Time, Duration) and in the settings you can set how you want it displayed. The frames you would have to calculate separately. But to get several opinions you should go to the Bento forums.

By: ben

ben — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:16:20 +0000

the TV time code template would be great but I’ve tried converting a timesheet template but it on work in hours and days and don’t think Bento can do it.

I need to calculate
start time
end time
Duration

hh.mm.ss.ff frame are in batchs of 30.

Anyone have any ideas?

By: Florian

Florian — Sun, 09 May 2010 02:06:28 +0000

Oba (for short),
yes, what you want is possible. Not EXACTLY, but in essence. For example, you can’t press buttons in Bento, but instead you can create Smart Collections which can automatically create lists of classes students sign up for.
But in order for you to see how it works and the different ways to accomplish it, you really have to take a first-hand look at Bento. That is easy since it comes with a 30-day trial period (not the iPad version).

By: obabilon

obabilon — Sat, 08 May 2010 21:29:35 +0000

I’m looking for a bento template solution for an iPad. I don’t own either but I’m researching possible solutions with the resulting purchase. The problem is we want to create a sign up sheet for students when they enter a karate class. It should be simple, they select their name from a drop down list or add their name in a blank field. They choose the class they are attending from a drop down list. A data stamp is added to the entry in the database and they click a button to submit or declare they are attending that night’s class. It would be great if there could be a button that the teacher can press to see a list of who has attended the class that night. Is this possible using Bento and the new iPad or am I just a dreamer.

By: Florian

Florian — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:14:52 +0000

Hi Erick,
Bento is pretty straight forward and intuitive. It’s hard to do something “completely wrong.”

Your project does not sound complicated either. I really think that you can easily do this yourself.
You should start by reading the Bento user’s manual (see the Help menu) to understand the basics.
Then you should map out the database on a piece of paper and assign initial field types to the chunks of information you need to enter, like text fields, choice fields, number fields, choice fields.
Then start with a blank template and add the fields one by one and drag them onto a form. Then you have to test the database by entering some records.

Once you have done all that, come back with any questions that might present themselves.