Forms take a hike

Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:03 PM

Posted by: Garnet Gratton

Garnet Gratton is back, and in the mood for summer. In her last post, she detailed a creative lesson plan using Docs and Mars Phoenix Lander in the news. This time, she'll be telling us about her experience using Docs forms to make scheduling extremely easy, and leave more time for summer fun.

During the school year, my hiking group and I meet every six weeks or so. We hike all over Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, as well as the Channel Islands, exploring new trails and renewing our friendships in beautiful surroundings. The last time we met, we climbed rocks, forded streams, and sat at the side of a riverbed to eat lunches from our backpacks. Usually this is when we decide on our next date to get together, but this time we hiked back without deciding anything.

With summer approaching, all six of us all had plans to be away on vacations at different times. Due to so many varied schedules, it looked like we might have to suspend our meet ups for the summer. This, until my friend Mary, who knew I'd been developing Google forms for classroom applications, suggested that I send out a form to collect vacation schedules from our hiking partners. Brilliant!

(A photo from a recent hike. This is what it's all about in the end :)

Once everyone sent me their away-dates through the form, I plugged them into Google Calendar. We are all going to be busy this summer, but looking at everyone's schedules, I realized that there were still a few hiking days available. Compared to traditional scheduling, rigorous hikes are a breeze. Using Docs forms for scheduling, however, makes even easy hikes seem difficult by comparison :)

Here's the form I used to collect the info (so simple, no?)