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its ability to retrieve and use up-to-the-minute infor- TECHNOLOGY mation, such as news feeds and weather maps. Another strength of FileMaker is its ability to almost effortless- ly display data dynamically on Web that it can 101 and Bento create for you. But alas, FileMaker’s $300 price tag is probably too steep for many Kappan readers. However, not long ago FileMaker released Bento 1 for $50. Bento 1 is an easy-to-use database for Macs BY ROYAL VAN HORN running OS 10.5, Leopard. Currently, Bento 1 is the only version available, and it does require Leopard. PREADSHEETS are good at some Before I discuss Bento, I need to go over some data- things but bad at others. They are good base terminology. In Bento, information is stored in at all things related to math and mon- fields, which are part of a record, which is part of a col- ey. For example, a spreadsheet is the ideal lection, which is part of a library. For example, a per- application to use to create a customized son’s last name would be one field, and all the fields grade book. On the other hand, spread- containing information on a person constitute a record. Ssheets are poor at sorting or displaying All the people in a group make up a collection. Various information in different ways. The trou- collections make up a library. In most other , ble with spreadsheets is that, unless you are very care- a library is called a database. And some database soft- ful, sorting a column does not sort all the other infor- ware allows you to subdivide your information into mation in the row. Thus if you want to sort the stu- many more levels. dents by their final grade in your customized grade The basic increment of a database is a record. Rec- book, you could end up just sorting the final grade ords can be likened to spreadsheet rows. An advantage column, which would disassociate the grades from the of Bento, and most other databases, is the ability to dis- students. play records in two ways: a “table” view, which is like a If you have a lot of information in a spreadsheet but spreadsheet, or a “form” view. In form view, all the in- do not use a lot of the math functions, there is a good formation in a record is displayed on a single screen chance that you would be better off putting the infor- or printed on a single page. If you have a media field mation in a database. One of the strengths of a data- — for example, a field with a person’s photograph — base — technically, it is database management software you can display it in form view, but not in table view. — is the ability to sort the information in various ways. Another advantage of form view is that it gives you Another strength is the ability to view or print a single plenty of room on a screen or page to display the in- record, for example, all the grades an individual student formation in various ways. If you get too many col- has received. You can do this with a spreadsheet by set- umns in a spreadsheet, the rows wrap across several ting the print range to a single row, but you would have pages. to do this individually for each student, which would Another nice feature of Bento is that it comes with be very time-consuming. In a database, you just print 24 templates for libraries, organized into Education, all records individually or custom design reports. An- Personal, and Work. These templates work much like other strength of modern databases is the ability to place those that come with such presentation software as Power- such media as pictures, sounds, and video into the data- Point or Keynote. In the Education category, there are base. For example, if you had a database of students, templates for Projects, Classes, Files, , To Do you could include pictures in each student’s record. Items, Events, Digital Media, Student List, Member- FileMaker, a subsidiary of Apple, makes the highly ship List, and Notes. Bento also has themes, which of- regarded database management program called, appro- fer different background art, such as cloth and granite. priately, FileMaker 9. This capable database is available This art looks nice on the screen, but it is best to turn for Macs, PCs, and multi-user file servers. FileMaker 9 it off when you print a large number of records so that can manage enough data to meet the needs of a fairly you don’t use up a lot of printer ink. large school district. One of FileMaker 9’s strengths is While Bento has many great features, it does have a major weakness. Bento is terrible at printing reports. I ROYAL VAN HORN is a professor of education at the Univer- It does not have a “report writer” feature, so how you sity of North Florida, Jacksonville (e-mail: [email protected]; web- print from Bento is very limited. Basically, what you sites: www.electronicscholar.com and www.luckychild.us). see on the screen is what you print. If you do not have

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a huge number of records, printing from form view use. In fact, it is downright fun to use. works fine. In addition, unlike nearly every other pro- You may have noticed that I specified Bento 1 early gram I have used, Bento does not have a “page setup” in the column. Some years ago, I vowed to never use option. That means you cannot print at, say, 150%. a 1.0 version of any software. First-edition software is Bento is available on a CD or as a download. Un- not as refined or polished as later versions. I suspect that less you are in a hurry, I recommend you purchase the Bento will mature and become much more useful. CD. That way, you will have a backup disc. Incidentally, FileMaker has received many awards I am currently working on a project that is investi- for its K-12 programs. If you want to teach students gating teacher mentoring practices and co-teaching — how to use a database, check out the FileMaker web- placing two teachers in a . Specifically, the site. For example, you can download free 30-day trial project is studying 47 co-teaching classrooms, or teach- versions of FileMaker. Teachers whose goal is to create er dyads. Details on these dyads were in an Excel spread- computer-literate students should not overlook knowl- sheet, but I thought it would be easier to work in a data- edge of database software. After all, computer literacy is base. Bento can import data from a spreadsheet, but you much more than knowing how to use a word processor. must first save the spreadsheet file as a CSV (comma separated values) file. Bento easily imported my CSV TECH NOTE file and automatically created fields using the labels at the top of the spreadsheet columns. Before I imported In the March column, I discussed Apple’s new prod- my CSV file, I had to create a new library, so I used ucts that use the high bandwidth 802.11n WiFi proto- one of Bento’s built-in themes that had a brown shad- col: the MacBook Air, Apple’s Extreme Wireless Base ing. This was a mistake because Bento does not have an Station, and the Apple TV Take 2. What I neglected option to turn off a theme; that is, Bento does not have to mention is that the 802.11n standard is still going a blank theme. Of course, I could copy the entire file through the adoption process. There is a small possi- and paste it into a new library, but that should not be bility that the standard will change. This will proba- necessary. bly not happen, but it would cause problems if you Once the data were in Bento, I examined the records tried to mix Apple and other brands’ wireless equip- in table view. Here the power of a database became ap- ment. K parent. One mouse click on a field name at the top of a column instantly sorted all records in ascending or- der. A second click sorted the records into descending order. This made it easy to sort the records by, for ex- ample, number of years of teaching experience for the mentor teacher and for the mentee teacher. Thus I could examine the data from many different vantages. Doing this brought out the fact that all but nine pairs of teach- ers were in inclusion classrooms — certainly a confound- ing variable that we will have to deal with. Bento has two other disadvantages worth mention- ing. First, you can export data only as a CSV file. This means some of the data, such as pictures, will not ex- port. A second disadvantage is that Bento does not have a good way to share your database with others. If shar- ing a database is important, the best advice is to move to a Web-based application such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Bento does have some pretty advanced features. For example, you can create relational databases. An exam- ple of a relational database is a library card catalog. The card catalog entry for a book might have simply “PH” in a publisher field. This PH would link the book to a publisher card, in this example, Prentice-Hall. The bottom line is that Bento is well suited for on-screen

APRIL 2008 617 File Name and Bibliographic Information k0804van.pdf Royal Van Horn, Technology: Database 101 and Bento, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 89, No. 08, April 2008, pp. 616-617.

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