There is one issue about the ISTE Conference, it ain’t cheap and if you are locked in the middle of the country like the Ninja is, the Conference isn’t all that easy to get to. (And the next couple of years isn’t going to be much easier, 2012: San Diego, CA; 2013: San Antonio, TX; 2014: Atlanta, GA; 2015: Philadelphia, PA; they really like the perimeter of the country don’t they?)

So if you are like the Ninja, you aren’t going to ISTE to take advantage of all the learning and fun (though 2013 might be doable.) No reason to feel left out though, you can take in some of the adventure in Philadelphia from the comfort of your own home! There are two ways that you can going about this, the cheap way or the way that will cost you a little bit of money.

First, the one that will cost you some money: ISTE is offering both Virtual Workshops ($79.00) and Remote ISTE ($99). In the Virtual Workshops you will be able to view seven recorded workshops being streamed at various times during the day. The Remote ISTE is like attending an actual day of the conference. Choose from one of the two tracks (or mix and match), pre- and post-conference activities and access to resources. It also looks like you get a tour of poster session, playgrounds, and exhibits. Sounds cool.

Let’s be real honest though, the Ninja has his eye on a new MacBook Pro and is trying to budget for that, so can you attend ISTE on the cheap? Like for free? The answer is yes!

Remember how I said that the folks attending the conference loved to share. Well, that is definitely true when it comes to what they are learning at conference. They do that is several ways: They write reflections or “live blogs” of the sessions that they are attending but that isn’t typically as immediate as we would like. That’s when we need to turn to our old friend Twitter. No really! Stay with me. Attendees are nice enough to tweet out what they are learning, addresses to resources they receive in sessions, and in the past I have found presenters who have tweeted out addresses to live streams of their sessions for free! Awfully nice of them isn’t it? Through the use of Twitter you can really piece together some really cool stuff. Now it isn’t in a nice neat location like the Virtual Conference or the Remote ISTE but it is a whole lot cheaper!

How might you go about using Twitter to keep up on all the action at ISTE? Well it is really simple and you don’t even need to get an account (but the Ninja would highly recommend getting one). Here are a few steps to stay in the know from the comfy confines of your couch (or where ever you prefer to use the computer.)

• Sign in to Twitter or if you aren’t getting an account (and you really should, just sayin’) go visit Twitter.
• See, that wasn’t painful. Now, look for the search field. If you are logged in, it will be near the top of the page like the diagram below. If you are not logged in, it is large and in charge in the middle of the page. It will look like the second image below.

• Now you are going to search for #ISTE11. Include the number sign or as Twitterites refer to them as hashtags.
• This will bring up a list of Tweets that have been marked with the #ISTE11 hashtag. It will also let you know when there are new tweets with that hashtag.

Now a few tips about reading Twitter feeds or searches, because it can take some getting used to:

• Mentions: You might see @username (for example: @edtechninja). This refers to another Twitter. This is called a mention. Someone might mention another Twitter user for many reasons. They may be replying to someone, they might be giving attribution to where they got the info in the tweet, they might just be mentioning another Twitter user or they might want that person to notice that particular tweet. You might see several @ mentions in one tweet, they are just different users and if you click on that it will take you to that person’s Twitter feed.
• Hashtags: You will see  #hashtags in many tweets. Since you are searching for #ISTE11 you will see all of the tweets will have that hashtag. Hashtags are used to tag or group tweets to make them easier to find. Another hashtag that you might see is #edchat (an education chat that occurs on Twitter every Tuesday at 6 pm (CST) and #edtech which is the hashtag for tweets dealing with educational technology. Some people use hashtags to add humorous asides.
• Shortened URLs: You will probably also see some odd-looking URLs or links. They might look like http://bit.ly or http://ow.ly or something similar. Those are links that have been made smaller so they fit within Twitter’s 144 character limit. Clicking on it will take you to the link.
• With the huge amount of tweets that will be coming out of ISTE, you won’t be able to read every single one. Go in with a mind-set of getting what you can when you are online.
• You might want to follow #ISTE2011, #peepsnotgoingtoiste, and #isteflashmob as well.
• Look forward to seeing video from the ISTE Flash Mob! Double dream hands!
• Watch out for Twitter give aways from ISTE Exhibitors. The Ninja even won something a few years ago and he wasn’t even at ISTE!

That’s the very basics of Twitter and you will quickly pick-up on the rest.

If you are lucky enough to go to ISTE, please remember those of us who are sitting at home trying to gleen everything we can from your blogging and tweeting. Share! Share! Share! Thanks in advance.

Any which way, the Ninja hopes that you are going to get in on the ISTE fun whether you are attending or even if you are a hundred miles away.

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So for mail merge we will be using two programs: Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. We have three major steps to accomplish:

1. Create data spreadsheet
2. Create document to merge into
3. Merge, save, or print.

We will start by starting up Excel.

Create Data Spreadsheet

Excel is a spreadsheet program that can perform all kinds of ninja magic on numbers and other data. A spreadsheet consists of rectangles called cells. Like other coordinate grids, each cell has a name that comes from the letter of the column and the number of the row. The highlighted cell below then would be named B2.

Basically we are going to use the spreadsheet as a data table and we will use row one for our headers. Double click cell A1 and type Fname.  Then you can either press the TAB key or double click on cell B1 and type Lname. These headers can be anything you want. Address, City, State, Zip, Parents are some common headers that the Ninja uses quite frequently. A reminder, pressing TAB will take you to the next cell in the row, ENTER or RETURN will take you to the next cell in the column. If you hold down SHIFT with either TAB or ENTER it will take you to the previous cell rather than the next. As you type your text may leave the cell you are typing in. Don’t worry, it will do that.

Once you have the headers in, it is time to fill in the data for your students under the header. Each student gets one row. I have an example below of what your data might look like when you are finished.

You will notice that some of the text is cut off when it runs into another cell. That is fine, your text is still there. The Tech Ninja normally has separate columns for City, State, and Zip but combined them for space. As needs arise, you can always go back and add more rows if you get a new student or new columns to track additional data. The ninja usually makes a spreadsheet with names and addresses before the start of school each year and then just add as I go on through the year.

Now save your spreadsheet. Remember where you saved it!

Create Document to Merge Into

Now we head over to Word.

Type up your document as you normally, however where there is data that will come from your spread sheet, just leave a space there.  See the sample below.

Once you have finished writing the document, it is time to start the mail merge process.

Click the Mailings tab and then from the Start Mail Merge drop down, choose “Letters”

Next from the Select Recipients, choose “Use Existing List.” An Open Data Source window will open. Browse to where you saved your spreadsheet file and click open.

A Select Table window will open. Select Sheet1$. Make sure that First row of data contains column headers is checked and then click OK.

Now to double check you will get the names you want, let’s click Edit Recipient List.

Now you should see the data that was in your spreadsheet. If you want to exclude a student from the mail merge you can remove the check from in front of their name. You might want to scroll down through the list to make sure there are no blank rows that have checks in front of them. Once you are satisfied with the list you can click OK.

Now we need to tell Word where want our data to appear in the final letter or document. To do that, place your cursor where you would like the first bit of data to appear. In the example below, I have place the cursor right after “To the parents of:” (1). Click the Write & Insert Field (2). Click the lower part of the Insert Merge Field (3) and then choose Fname (4).

«Fname» will appear where your cursor was. Continue to add fields to your document. You can change the formatting of the fields by applying underline, bold, italics, font, font size, etc. to the fields. You can also copy, paste and move the fields around your document. In the completed example below I have made the grades bold and two font sizes larger. Note: the complete field is the text between the double greater and lesser than signs. If you alter those signs or text in between them, the field will not merge properly.

Next, we need to preview the document to make sure that everything will merge correctly. Click the preview Results drop-down button and select Preview Results. You can use previous and next record buttons to see other data sets.

If you are happy with the result, we can go on to the final step.

Merge, Save, and Print

Now click Finish & Merge. Here we have three options:

1. If you edit individual documents Word will create a new document with each record on a different page. You can edit each individual letter, save the document and then print.

2. You can print the documents. When you merge to printer, a window will come up asking which records you would like to print. If you want all of the records printed, simply click OK and print away.

3. If you included e-mail addresses in your original spreadsheet you could also e-mail this document to parents by selecting Send E-Mail Messages. Word will ask you which column in your spreadsheet has the e-mail address and it will ask if you want to send the e-mail message as HTML so the document will appear in the e-mail message formatted as you have done in Word, Plain Text so the document will appear in the e-mail message but it will not be formatted, or to send the document as an attachment. Each recipient will get only the record that is associated with the e-mail address in the spreadsheet. Cool.

Now that you have created a data source, you can always go back and add info and use it for other mail merge documents, decreasing the amount of time that you are working on personalized letters and documents.

If you are using an older version of Word and Excel, the process is pretty similar however in Word you need to go to Tools and then Mail Merge for a mail merge wizard that will walk you through the steps for merging. One thing to remember, when you choosing your data source in older versions of Word, it doesn’t automatically look for spreadsheets so you will need to change the File Type to either All Files or Excel Spreadsheet.

Happy merging!