Trello for Group Planning and Projects

Sometimes, gathering a group of people together for a project and coordinating everything that has to happen can be unpredictable and confusing. Questions of who was supposed to do what and when can get tricky to coordinate. Trello is a pretty slick app and web based utility which can help. From a certain point of view, it is just a bulletin board on steroids, but its simplicity and flexibility give it power.

I'm really just a beginner on this app, having learned about it during Punahou's iPad Lab School workshops this summer (http://labschool.punahou.edu). For my Economics of Personal Finance course, the class is creating an iBook together that will cover their independent research on what graduating high school students need to know about financial planning. We will be publishing the book to the senior class at the end of the semester. We're using a combination of EasyBib on the web and Trello, both as app and web utility, to keep organized and allow students to communicate with each other and critique each other's work.

Basically, one makes an organization, has the students join it, and starts adding cards to various lists. Some setup has to happen on their website (https://trello.com/) where signing in with your 'Iolani Google account is one option. Then, you create a new organization and add boards to it.

Each board is a work space for creating cards, assigning cards to members, and commenting on those cards.

Once you have your boards added and members added to your community, the actual iPad app becomes useful. Here's my EPF 'Iolani organization in the app. I have it set up so each class section has its own board, though all members can see each board.

Once you're set up, you can add cards to To Do lists, comment on cards, attach files to cards, assign cards to members, and other features I haven't really played with yet. Here's a peek at one of our lists of student topics for the book.

Then, inside each card, you can add comments, attach files, add web links, make lists, assign cards to members, change colors, and add due dates. Below, we've used it to log the interview comments as I briefly chatted with each student on the status of their research. I'm still working out what should go in Trello and what should stay in EasyBib with their actual research. (Full EasyBib functions appear to be only web based rather than in their app.) Our processes are evolving. 

Note: We've also found some limitations because of iOS. For instance, at this point, it looks like only photos can be uploaded to a card directly from the iPad, just like in Safari. There are also a few card features that aren't yet on the iPad app but are accessible from the iPad via Safari.

This is clearly an enterprise level solution with applications inside the classroom. I wish I'd had it in the years when I was hosting the VEX robotics competitions. For any project needing organization, transparency, and a clear responsibility trail, I really like this app/web combination. It is definitely a web solution with a solid and evolving free iPad app. (The web service is also free with optional upgrade accounts, though I haven't found the free account limiting yet.)

I've only just begun to work with the app. I'd love to hear about how others are flexing the muscles of this productivity app in their classrooms or with other school projects.