Office+Productivity

media type="custom" key="14458082" Generation Gap in TV usage survey created in Google Docs

Download to access the Excel sheet to look at the data A screenshot of the results in Excel

media type="custom" key="14458588" A presentation on the results created in PowerPoint and uploaded to SlideShare.

Awareness - I was aware how to create documents using Microsoft Office, but not comfortable organizing data and making charts in Excel. It isn't something that I usually do, especialy since my fiance has lots of experience using the program. I had given one quiz using Google docs before, but was still not very familiar with the editing and distribution techniques in Google docs.

Exploration- I decided to use Google docs to create the survey because I would like to use Google docs in more of my teaching practice. I liked trying to edit my survey in Google docs. It was surprisingly easy to change the template and make the questions exactly how I wanted them. I briefly flirted with the idea of organizing the data in a Google spreadsheet and making the presentation through Google, but I felt like I was limited on what I could achieve and manipulate in the Google formats. I decided to use Microsoft with the last two products because I am more comfortable knowing that I could add transitions, charts, etc. fairly easily.

Learning - I would love to continue learning how to use Google as an educator. There are so many creative and intuitive programs built into the website that I think it could potentially be a "one stop shop" for me. I believe that Google offers webinars on this exact topic, but I really would like to go to a hand-on workshop so I could put what I learned to immediate use. I learned in this project about how best to structure my data to show the trends I noticed in charts. I have done this before, but it took me a little bit to remember how to do it on my Mac. I also discovered how to apply a pretty template to my Google docs survey making it more visually appealing.

Application- I think that I will definitely be using Google docs more to create surveys, quizzes, and even documents used in my personal life. I also can see myself using SlideShare to make notes and student presentations embedded on our class website. I like to embed things because it minimizes ads, inappropriate content, etc. that students see navigating the Internet.

Reflection- Messing with the Excel document frustrated me somewhat. I'm just not naturally inclined to think in formulas and charts. It was frustrating when my charts did not have the variables in the right places or wouldn't accept what I was trying to name it. Hopefully, as I gain more experience with using Excel it will become more intuitive to me. I loved the Google applications, especially because they are housed online. It makes it so much easier for me who accessing between 2-3 different computers a day to keep up with where my assignments are when I can log in and get to them instead of uploading them from a flash drive. Completing this assignment gave me the opportunity to see how Microsoft Office products work together to communicate information. In the future I would like to push myself to explore how Google apps work together and learn more about how to use the presentation and spreadsheet features in it.