Now I see Google forms as an information gathering tool, as opposed to an assessment tool. As a teacher I've used it as a way to help students organize parties (who's bringing what snack, and a way to vote on what movie gets watched), as a project hook, asking for student responses that I then shared back with them at the end of the project, and a tool for forming student work groups based on their particular interest for a project. I've also used it to get information from my colleagues.
As a researcher I think Google Forms is probably the best resource I have at my disposal to get data from my subjects. It affords me a simple and easy way to gather, store and organize their responses.
I just got finished building a form to collect information from students for phase two of my research project. It was frustrating in the sense that they just revamped it and there were all kinds of things that I used to know how to do, but suddenly didn't seem to be an option. I got the form done, but it probably took em twice as long since I had to relearn what the program looked like. This always seems to be the case for me, as soon as feel comfortable with something it changes. This is the Message that McLuhan was talking about. Without the change, nothing would ever evolve. I'm not sure if it's more intuitive, it certainly looks more modern (clean lines with rounded corners, not too much information presented at once) though.
TAGS: 703, HW, Google Forms