Surveys and Spreadsheets

A couple observations about surveys and spreadsheets that I must share:

First, all my students produce some authentic data to prove or disprove their essential question: interviews, surveys, and experiments. It is the first-hand knowledge that makes the difference between a research project and a retrieval project. There are handouts guiding the procedure for writing a survey, interview, or experiment...and then there's the struggle of interpreting data.

That's the snag with students who want to do surveys. The rule of thumb is more is better, but the tabulating of 'more' drive many students crazy because of the time involved. A student may want to survey 6th, 7th, and 8th graders for information and then be able to see a pattern of change as they get older, but the numbers have be calculated first...and sometimes the calculating becomes too large a hurdle to overcome.

peopleperformancellc.com

With a survey done as a Google Form, the answers drop into a spreadsheet immediately which can then be added, or averaged, or whatever. It makes the statistical end of a survey so much easier!

This only work with people who have Chrome, or will copy and paste the link address into the URL box, but overall it IS thrilling to come back from whatever sports practice here is and get answers!