High School Student Use the Mass of the Earth to Water Trees
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High School Student Use the Mass of the Earth to Water Trees
- 1. Data Tracking: An Easier Way to Track our Tree Maintenance Needs Ned Brockmeyer Community Arborist/Youth Tree Team Director Keep Indianapolis Beautiful
- 3. Problems with paper tracking
- 4. Digital Tools--GPS Units, iPads, smart phones
- 5. Formstack Process Chose Formstack over Google forms because it has readily available GPS information Forms can be aggregated directly into Google Sheets and accessed on Google Drive allowing for updates in real time in the field Already have established partnership with Formstack as an in kind donation Libby, Assistant YTT Director, made this her project from the start
- 9. Formstack Process Alt Task Request Form
- 10. Formstack Process Form Aggregation and Google Drive
- 11. Formstack Process Form Aggregation and Google Drive
- 12. Formstack Process Form Aggregation and Google Drive
- 13. Costs and Challenges High monetary investment up front and continuously (ipads and data plan) Technology is not always 100% reliable Remembering how to data track in an analog fashion, if needed Training Spreadsheets would be faster but could create more error Remembering every step of the process of data entry
- 14. Strengths and next steps Standardizes data entry of all maintenance tasks in digital format (~8 hours per week during peak maintenance season) Positive Impact on Tree Health Efficient - Frees up arborist time to focus on needs of the trees instead of entering data Reduces Paper waste If input is done incorrectly, system automatically sends an email to the directors. Google Forms and Sheets are free and available now! Anyone can access alternative task request form to ensure maintenance steps will be taken Embed Maintenance tasks into tree database so that each tree comes with a list of maintenance tasks and the date they were completed
Editor's Notes
- #2: Talk about need for maintenance tracking Start story about meeting Libbby
- #3: Decided to move away from paper tracking to digital using a combination of formstack and google drive (could just use Google forms) Story about first meeting with Libby way back when
- #4: Paper Waste! Tough reading chicken scratch Long hours of data entry Would get wet
- #5: Used Spreadsheets to start but too cumbersome on the ipads and whole file could be deleted which is why we started using forms GPS unit is pricey and can only do one thing, also not as accurate as iPad GPS info
- #6: Importance of data tracking city $ and reporting out Tree Health
- #7: Building of the form is relatively easy and straightforward. We created forms for our work, our staking and our water use.
- #8: Save and Resume feature helps if crew is at a hydrant for multiple hours, reduces chance of losing initial water meter number. Confirmation page to check numbers
- #9: Note that you must click use your current location every time so that the GPS coordinates reload to the current position Allows us to create aggregated maps of all of our tree stakes Previously, these were tracked loosely on paper
- #10: Given to people in the community (City Forestry officials and coworkers) Allows coworkers and partners to instruct YTT on what work needs to get done in terms of mulching, pruning, dead tree removal, staking, etc. Urgency allows us to determine what we do first.
- #11: Google Drive collects all of the information for these forms and puts them into organized spreadsheets Easily accessible in the field or at home
- #12: Water Log gives us an automatic timestamp and location of the hydrant
- #13: The list of stakes is more detailed than ever before and allows us to make informed decisions about when to go out to remove stakes (minimum of one year on the tree)
- #14: Weakness Cost of data plan, but also car chargers and ipad cases, etc. Training was difficult with youth Google Sheets could be used Data could just be entered directly into excel or google sheets spreadsheet, but that is too easy to delete or improperly input information so standard form was created for each task Stake log is more steps/water log is more steps because they both require entry into work log as well but it allows us to quickly access accurate information including GPS coordinates
- #15: Strength Alt Task Request form given to public officials as well