Thing+18

If you chose the cell phone adventure last week, you might have found that even cell phones can be used for surveys… but in this Thing we will be discovering some of the "survey services" (that's fun to say) that are available for free online.

Polls and Surveys can be used for polling 100 people (like on "[|Family Feud]"), making money ([|Surveysavvy]), giving some statistics to things like elections ([|Gallup polls]), and educational feedback (end-of-class surveys, to name one). What do all of these have in common? They are set up because they want feedback. What they do with that feedback (or how they interpret the feedback) changes as often as the wind ([|Are we, or are we not, in a recession?])… but the first step is always to get the feedback.

So this is our Thing for today. You get to discover the inner-workings of the various survey sites and really get a taste and feel for how they work. The fantastic part is that these sites (for the most part) do most of the data collecting and crunching for you. So you set up your survey and get immediate results… fully tailored with statistical analysis.

Here are the sites we'll be working with:
 * [|Survey Gizmo]
 * [|Survey Monkey]
 * [|Zoomerang]
 * [|KeySurvey]
 * [|Poll Daddy]
 * Discovery Exercise**
 * 1) Check out (trial run or tour) at least three of the survey sites. See what they have to offer.
 * 2) Choose a site and create an account and
 * 3) Create (and use) a survey! Create the survey, have people take it, and take a look at the sleek results you get.
 * 4) Blog about the experience: what you liked and didn't like. What you hoped for and how you can use this personally/professionally.
 * Hint: Surveys are also named "Choice" in Moodle if you're using it!