Reinventing the alarm clock with help from Google Forms [Classroom, Geeky]

Two of my third grade students are currently working on inventing alarm clocks. They began by brainstorming what they think goes into a quality alarm clock. Some of the more interesting ideas were having a clock under your mattress that punches you until you wake up, an alarm emitting the smell of manure, and a model that played a recording of all the activities you have to look forward to during the upcoming day. Definitely some cool ideas!

Before the designed their clocks, they wanted to gather some information. They used Google Documents to design a survey that their classmates are taking to find out what kind of alarm clock their target audience would be interested in. There are other ways to collect this kind of data on the internet; however, we found Google Docs to be the quickest and easiest.

Here is a quick rundown of how to use Google Docs to create a form (thanks to Matt Silverman):

http://www.mattsilverman.com/2008/10/introduction-to-google-forms.html

One class has taken the survey so far. Feel free to fill it out: http://is.gd/k2GE After having all the answers automatically go into a spreadsheet, Google Docs gives us a graphical summary of the information.

Here's an example:
















The last step in the process is shrinking the URL. There are a few sites that do this including TinyURL, is.gd, cli.gs, and others. I like is.gd because it has never failed for me (TinyURL has had problems with Google Docs) and because there is a Firefox extension for is.gd that makes it way too easy to use. A URL shrinker does what it says it does. It takes a ridiculously long URL like the one Google Docs gives you for your form:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p6P2Iowg-2SvB6R4FKeAUdg&hl=en

and shrinks it down to this:

http://is.gd/k2GE

For a free service, there's not much more I could ask for. Imagine trying to get students to that first URL, then feel relieved that companies like is.gd exist so all you have to write on the board is "is.gd/k2GE" and your kids will be off and running.

I hope Matt's walkthrough helps anyone interested in using Google Forms. If not, leave me a comment and I can go into more detail.