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Getting Started With Field Data Collection and Data Visualization

Dr. Cynthia Annett, Google Earth Outreach Trainer

University of Alaska and Kansas State University

Google Forms and Sheets

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Go to Google Drive
Sign in
New > Google Forms

Easiest way to create a form

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Click Settings for controls

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Form Settings

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Style form

You can change

color, use stock images or

your own images

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Click on ? in lower right corner for help

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Add a question

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Choose question type

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Delete or duplicate question, make required

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Add photo, YouTube, Section

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Change order of questions

Click on question to highlight, drag and drop

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Form can be emailed, embedded in a website, or called up from shared Google Drive file, link or QR code (generate QR code with Google URL shortener)

Add collaborators

Send, Collaborate, Embed Form

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Get embed code for website

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Create response spreadsheet

Click Responses tab Click Sheet icon

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Create Response Spreadsheet

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Responses will be time stamped and automatically added

to a Google Spreadsheet

Response Spreadsheet

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Combine columns

If you want to map the responses you will need to have location information (street address, name of city, Lat/Long, etc.)
If you ask for a street address, it is best to specify format by using different questions so you make sure to get the city and state
You can then combine the columns using the Concatenate function in spreadsheets

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Combine columns into one address column

Create a column for the combined address, then type the concatenate formula in the first cell
In this example, we are combining the information in cells E2, F2 and G2, and placing a comma in between (the commas are in quotation marks)

=concatenate (E2,”,”,F2,”,”,G2)

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Concatenate

Column H is the combined address

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Autofill

Now autofill the rest of the cells by dragging the lower right corner of the first cell down the column - this applies the concatenate formula to the entire column

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Calculations

The concatenate function was an example of a formula you can use to conduct a calculation

Additional calculations

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Download as CSV file

To open in Excel, Fusion Tables, My Maps or ArcMap (ESRI) you can download the spreadsheet as a CSV file (comma separated value). This is a standard format that can be used in many applications.

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Google Spreadsheet

You can also create a spreadsheet in Google Drive directly, without creating a Form

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Import Spreadsheet into My Maps

You can import a Google Spreadsheet directly to My Maps without downloading it

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Why no punctuation?

You might have been wondering why the questions were written without punctuation - this is because when you are importing the response spreadsheet into some of the Google geotools punctuation can create problems with the mapping programs so it’s best to just leave it off.