The LTD Project Blog

Following up one of Larry Ferlazzo’s top site recommendations, I tried out Fo.reca.st, and found it relatively easy to use to create a survey – once I’d discovered the functions hidden behind all the tabs, and tried out the various ways to format surveys. I’m not sure that the format names (for example, “plugged”) or the interplay between survey default and item specific display settings are easy to understand, particularly for English language learners and the not-so computer savvy (his criteria, 2008.08.22), but the illustrations and individual item previews may serve to bridge the gaps.

One problem I encountered while test driving a survey occurred when I missed the review button on a final item by a few millimeters, and wound up posting before answering all of the items in the survey. With no final warnings or confirmation routines that I recall, asking for example, “Are you sure you want to submit those responses?”, especially on surveys set for only one go per IP (and not requiring responses on first pass), the review button location, and possibility of submitting responses before really ready may be usability issues.

Nevertheless, ease of editing, formatting, and publishing virtually unlimited numbers of surveys, and items, as well as pre-formatted displays of results, is noteworthy. So are the possibilities of adding images, sound tracks, and video files for survey item stimuli, though at present they must be stored elsewhere. One recommendation I got was to store images in Flickr (personal correspondence, 2008.08.30). However, when you go to grab a URL at Flickr, the download page reminds you that Community Guidelines for uploaded images call for links back to the originals on the Flickr site, from their new locations. If there’s a trick for backlinking from images used at Fo.reca.st, I haven’t found it, or figured it out.

If you and learners with whom you work have ready access to public file storage, for A/V stimuli to add to your surveys, and you don’t need or want to manipulate resultant data yourselves, then Fo.reca.st seems to be a good way to go.

It is such a pleasure to have hooked up with the Learning with Computers (LwC) group – all the more so now that the group had undertaken to explore Diigo, and is putting that free social bookmarking engine through its paces.

Messages flowing into my mailbox on a daily basis are hard to ignore, and fill a professional development gap that I’d hoped might, after I joined the EdubloggerWorld wiki and started monitoring the Tagging Standards page (along with all others on the latter site).

Actually, I cannot recall getting any notifications at all from the latter. That is why I’m so happy to be involved with the LwC crowd in a collective exploration of tagging practices.

On Wed., Jan. 16, 2007, I had a first go at running a Zoomerang survey, using the service package available for free. Although the survey was easy to build and implement, severe limitations of free services made extracting the results a major pain.

As a peer had warned me almost a year ago [add ref. about here], when I first explored the possibilities, Zoomerang allows for free neither data exports, a very enticing Pro functionality, nor access to survey data after 10 days. Pro functionality isn’t cheap: 350 USD/year or 99 USD/3 months for educational uses (Zoomerang Support, 2008.01.18).

Fortunately, I had planned a simple survey – only three items: two unique item selection type items, and one free response item. The simplicity of the survey made responses relatively easy to represent from temporarily available Zoomerang data collections.

Soon after I had closed the survey, Zoomerang made collective and individual responses available on a website. I quickly endeavored to record response data manually in a location where I could retrieve and use it, ten or more days on, on my computer.

The gut nuts of this review are:

• For survey development and implementation, Zoomerang is easy to use;
• For free service-based data extraction, Zoomerang is a pain in the a….

Arizona State University’s News and Information Center sports an interesting pitch for Google Apps. It cites benefits for educational institutions’ piggy-backing extra-large scale technology & security developments.

I wonder…. Is it possible that smaller institutions than ASU would derive proportionately larger benefits?