Reflection for ISTE NETS Standard #3

My most recent project was to create a survey in Google Docs. It took me a while to come up with what I deemed to be a "worthy topic," but I quickly discovered that looking to various individuals that I interacted with online and asking them about where they get their news from could be very interesting. This is where the idea for the survey Does Social Networking Effect Where We Get News From? was born.

I really enjoyed the creation of the survey: determining which questions I should ask and what the possibility of answers should be. I also wanted to allow people the opportunity to include their own opinions and include answers that I may not have thought were possible responses. I also enjoyed checking the results of my survey for the 48 hours that it was available to responders. It really excited me that I received 104 responses during that period. I have to admit that I felt special knowing that I probably had the most in our class. I guess that shows a bit of a competitive streak, doesn't it?

The most challenging aspect of this assignment was reviewing and analyzing the data once it had been collected. To be honest, I'm not sure why we downloaded it into Excel for manipulation. Shouldn't Google Docs be able to handle doing that as well? At least that would have made the most sense to me. My biggest disappointment with the data manipulation was the difficulty that I had getting charts created. I found this to be very frustrating, as did others in the class. Fortunately for them, their data sets were smaller so they could count them by hand and manually create the charts if necessary. My data set was much too large for that. I am still not sure if the issue with the chart creation was on my end (with several others having the same problems) or on Excel's end. I guess the only way to really find out that will allow me to learn more is to keep using Excel for data manipulation and chart creation. I might have to see if Google Docs also has that capability. It seems as though it should, but I have not used it enough to know for sure.

This project fits into ISTE NETS Standards number three: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning. This standard emphasizes the following:
a. demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations
b. collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation
c. communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats
d. model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning

The actual creation of the survey using Google Forms meets (a) as I have created surveys in the past for NMU's student chapter of Phi Delta Kappa using Survey Monkey. It was interested to see the differences between the two programs. This project allows for (b) by providing a venue through which I have been able to learn how to look at data and what types of questions are more promising for use in surveys. This will allow me to get more accurate feedback from individuals that will help me to provide better instruction to my students in the future. The use of Excel and PowerPoint relate best to (c) as they are the vehicles through which the data was reviewed and shared with others. The conceptualization of using Google Docs fits (d) as it is an emerging Web2.0 tool that succeeded in allowing me to complete my research and share it with others.