Google Forms

OK. I thought this was another cool project. I've learned how to use a very flexible tool that I can use to communicate with students, parents, other teachers, and my family members.

Once I located the Google Forms start page - which took me longer than I thought it would - I found creating this form to be very easy. Google appears to have thought of everything. This tour of Google Forms addressed all of the questions or problems that I encountered. Wait! I can just embed that:

For the purposes of this activity, I designed a survey related to an upcoming summer vacation with my extended family. We is still have over a month to go before the actual vacation begins and yet the family drama has already started. Great. Anyway, it's clear that little more planning and communication would have prevented - or at least minimized - some of the drama.

Anyway, I created a 9 question survey using each of the available formats. I also made a handful of the questions mandatory. You can link to my survey form here. As you can see, it's a simple form that is clean and easy to understand. Once you've created a survey form, you are given the option to create a spreadsheet that will automatically capture the responses to your survey. This is where the real value of this activity is to be found - data collected and organized while you focus on other tasks. To view the spreadsheet associated with my form, click here.

Sharing the survey form with other people is simple. It's a matter of entering email addresses into a field. My sister completed and returned her survey with no trouble and no questions asked. She didn't even need to be a Google Docs user. Very cool. I did have to grant permission for access to the spreadsheet. I chose to allow access to anyone who has the link - which should mean that anyone that reads this blog can access the document. 

I can imagine using this tool to collect information about students, to gather feedback on a particular task, and to help plan events. It's a very practical and easy to use.

Relationship to Standards - the Google Forms activity relates well to the following standards: 3(a) in that Google Forms allows teachers to demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies; 3(b) in that Google Forms is an unbeatable way to communicate with students, peers, parents and community members using digital tools; and 3(d) in that teachers can use Google Forms to model and facilitate the effective use of current and emerging digital tools to analyze and evaluate information.