Google Forms and Google Hangouts

Google forms and hangouts are two great resources that can allow you to collaborate with other people. All of Google's products are rooted in real-time collaboration. I am a Google-Junkie. Below you will learn hoe to create and use a Google Form for gathering information from people, as well as how to create and join a Google Hangout.

Google Forms are a great way to gather information from people in am organized way. It's a simple survey tool that automatically populates all of the survey responses into a spreadsheet. I have used a form to gather data about my students at the start of the year: a type of virtual interest inventory.

The steps below explain how to create and use a Google Form. There is also a screencast of the process for you visual learners (like me). 

1. Log in to Google and click on Drive

2. Click "Create" and  choose "Form"

3.  Name your form and choose the theme

4. Add in all of your questions. You can choose from various styles of questions, and choose if you want the question to be required. An advanced option is to add different pages within the survey. For example, you could have three questions on the first page of the survey, then three more questions on a second page of the survey. For smaller kids, you may want to have one question per page so they don't get overwhelemd by all of the questions being on the same page

5. Click "Choose Response Destination" and click "Create" to make the spreadhseet that will hold all of your survey responses.

6. Click "View Live Form" to see what your form will look like.

7. Click the blue "Send Form" button in the upper right, copy the link and paste it into an email, blog post, or other location that your survey respondents have access to. When someone clicks on this link it will take them to the survey. Their results will automatically populate into the spreadsheet that you created in step 5.

At the bottom of the form you have some choices to customize your form, depending on its use. You can set it to someone could submit another response, publish a link to show the results of the survey, and allow respondents to edit their submission. How you choose to set these depends on the purpose for your survey.

If you want to see how it works...

Click here to view the live form and submit a response. You can go ahead and fill in the form!

Click here to see the spreadsheet with responses.After you fill in your responses you can see them here.

When you go back to your Drive you will see both your form and your spreadsheet in the list. Please watch the screencast, and post a comment below if you have any questions!

Google Hangouts are a great way to collaborate with people. This has amazing capabilities for a personal learning community that goes beyond your regional resources.A hangout is a way for ten people to be in a video chat at the same time. There are also built in apps that allow you to show YouTube videos, pull up a document from your Google Drive, as well as give yourself a pirate hat or a birthday cake. Google is silly sometimes.

The steps below will explain how to join a hangout that you have been invited to.
1. Go to Google, log in, and click on Google+ (it will say +You if you haven't set up your Google+ account yet).
2. Slide your mouse over the left hand side of your screen to allow your toolbar to pop up. Select "Event".
3. Click the event that you have been invited to.
4. Click on the link "Hangout" to join the video call!