iData with the iPad---a tutorial for therapists and educators

Data collection isn't the most fun topic.  Before iPads, my folders for kids were full of sticky notes, therapy data forms, attendance forms, and other assorted loose items.  At progress report time, I would try to study my hand-written data for trends, and come up with some percentages to show growth, or lack of growth.  For children with multiple goals, or those with collaborative goals, consistent data collection was even more challenging!

Enter Google Forms and Spreadsheets!!!  This blog is a brief tutorial on how to create a Google form for your data collection, which then saves your information into a spreadsheet.  Once I create my form, I can save the form icon to the iPad screen making recordkeeping so much like a dream come true!

Step 1---go to Google Documents  (you must have a gmail account).  Under 'create new', select 'form'.  It will take you to a new form which you will name in the next step.

Step 2    In the top line, give your form a title.   If you are collecting data for an IEP, you can name it after the IEP.  If it's some other purpose, call it something else!!

Step 3  Now you are ready for the fun stuff.  You get to create questions for your form. These questions, in my case, are taken directly from specific IEPs or treatment plans.  You will be creating one form per client
Some questions lend themselves to different types of responses.  If you need the date of a session, or the number of minutes seen recorded, this might work with a 'text' response.  If you are recording whether a child met or didn't meet an objective, multiple choice (yes/no), might work better. If you want to record an anecdotal response, select 'paragraph text'.
    For my first question---I'm recording attendance. I want to make sure I record if the student was present, and if there was no speech that day, why.  I'm using the 'multiple choice' question type since there is only one answer that will work.  Once finished with the question and answer possibilities, I click 'done'.

After clicking 'done' this is what question one looks like on the form:

Step 4:  You are now ready for making Question 2.  You can add a question by clicking the upper left button, or edit an existing question by clicking the pencil.  You can see that I already added a second question using the 'checkboxes' type of question which can allow more than one response. 

You can add as many questions as you want.  One SLP I know collaborates with a teacher and puts the entire repertoire of the objectives from a child's IEP on the form.  It makes for a long form, so if you want a shorter one, limit yourself to one section (e.g. communication objectives).

Step 5  Once the form is complete, send it to yourself and anyone else who will be completing it (e.g. teacher).

Your information collected by this form will go into a spreadsheet in Google documents.  This is what a sample spreadsheet looks like.

    

With  one click, a summary of all of your information over time can be generated with graphs and lists.  Here is a sample.  

My next tutorial will be to teach how to send your form to the iPad so that you have easy access to it.

Google forms and documents have really helped my record keeping for my kids. Here is a blog I posted about using Forms and Docs to take attendance.  I hope Google forms help you too, and you can use it in your work!