Tech Tuesday, Season 4 Episode 9 – Using Google Forms with Student Responses

This week I’m focusing on how you can use Google Forms to collect and quickly assess student responses.  

I know the power of Google Forms and sometimes I forget that not everyone has the same knowledge about Google tools that I have and that’s where today’s topic comes from.  I saw a need, shared a tip, and then went, wait a minute, how many other people don’t know about this? So I’m sharing it with all of you!  

A couple of weeks ago, I was observing one of our Spanish classes, where students were working with present progressive and the infinitive forms of words.  I learned that the present progressive is the form talking about what’s going on right now, such as, “I am filming a video”, while the Infinitive form talks about what’s going to happen in the future, such as “I am going to film a video on Friday”. To make sure students were mastering this concept, the teacher had set up pictures on a Google Doc that students would caption with the Infinitive form and describe what was going to happen in the pictures.  

We use the SAMR framework in our district and when I observe classes I think about

“can this activity be done differently?”

Is it a substitution activity that could be adapted to redefinition?

Is there too much of an emphasis on technology that needs to be refocused back on content? 

I share my observations with those teachers and make suggestions when warranted.  

Now, this activity was clearly substitution, but I didn’t think of a better way to do it until the end of the class when a student asked for help turning in the Google Doc as for some reason she couldn’t copy the share link to turn it in on Canvas.  She eventually figured it out, but as we were working, I thought what if they did this assignment on Google Forms instead?

It doesn’t change the activity from substitution, but using Forms could be an easier way to set this up, getting responses quickly and assessing students before the end of class.  This way, students don’t have to worry about making a copy of the Google Doc or sharing, taking up less class time. They only need to hit the submit button.  

Now, here’s the best part!  This can be done in ANY content area with ANY topic!  All you need are some questions to ask students! Let me walk you through how you can do this.

GOOGLE DOCS OR GOOGLE FORMS

So here’s the original version from that Spanish class. Note the picture and the prompt underneath.  Students would finish writing the sentence in the proper form. Then, copy the share link and paste into the assignment submission area in Canvas.  

Now, here’s my version.  Just as the original, I added a picture to each question, plus a prompt.  I set the question type as short answer and made it a required question. You don’t need pictures, but if you want them, click on the image icon next to the box for the question and either upload or search the Internet or your Google Drive for pictures.   

Students will then fill out their answers and hit submit. You, as the teacher, automatically get the answers and can view them in the summary or open the spreadsheet view, giving you more options to sort and assess who mastered the concept and who needs more help.  And while I hope you won’t need this, you can also view the timestamp for when the activity was submitted.  

USING GOOGLE FORMS IN OTHER CONTENT AREAS

There will be some variations on what you can do with the form based on your content area.  For English or History, you could add a picture and change the question format to paragraph and have students describe what is going on in the picture, almost like a “caption this” moment.  

For math, you CAN set up equations using a Chrome extension called Equatio.  I’ve talked about this extension before and it works really well with Google Forms.  To add equations, click the Equatio icon in the extension menu and then click on the blue icon next to the question area.  Equatio will appear at the bottom of the screen, then start typing your equation. To add math symbols, click on the 3 dots and select the one you need.  When finished, click insert.

DELIVERING ACTIVITY TO STUDENTS

Now, there’s two different ways I recommend delivering this to students.  The first way is click on “Send” in the top right corner and select the link icon.  I always suggest shortening a link when you can and then copy and paste this on a document or into your LMS, in my case Canvas.  Then students will click on the link and complete the activity.  

OR…you can embed the form into your LMS which means less clicks for students to get to the form.  Create an assignment in Canvas first and set the “Submission Type” to “no submission”. Back over on Google Forms, instead of clicking the link icon, click the embed icon right next to it.  Copy the embed code and go to Canvas. 

Go in and edit your assignment and click on HTML Editor. Paste your code here and then click back on Rich Text Editor and viola! There’s your Google Form!  Save it and students will be able to access the form without leaving Canvas. If you don’t want to use the assignment option, you can also add this to a blank page in Canvas, following the same steps.

But what if you use Google Classroom?  I honestly went back and forth deciding if I should even mention this as my school district does not use this tool, but I finally decided that as a Google for Education Certified Trainer, I should probably be talking about Google Classroom too.  So, in Google Classroom, create an assignment with the title and instructions, and then click on the Google Drive button and locate your already created form, select it and then click assign.

TECH NEWS

I have two big items for Tech News today:

The first is Desmos has announced a contest that I think is an awesome authentic activity for math students!  Desmos noticed that a lot of classrooms were doing math art projects involving various equations and inequalities in conjunction with their tool.  So they created the Global Art Contest for students ages 13 – 18.  Students may submit a Desmos graph to the competition via their teacher or parent by April 10, 2020.  Click here to find out more information.   

Second, Pear Deck has a new feature called Pear Pop! This is ideally designed for those on-the-fly, spur of the moment learning opportunities or if you don’t have prep time to make a full out Pear Deck.  Pear Pop works as a quick bell ringer, comprehension check, or ask a question and think-pair-share. 

Log in to peardeck.com and right on the home page, click on “choose a prompt”, then select the prompt you want to use.  It will immediately jump to present mode and then students can login in via joinpd.com. Then use Pear Deck as you normally would.  For more information, check out this Pear Pop post.

WANNA BLOG?

Back in January, George Couros came to visit my school after we conducted a book study on his book, The Innovator’s Mindset.  One of the things he talked about was for teachers to blog as a way to reflect on their teaching.  Now, I know some in the group were probably thinking, when do I have time to create a blog? Well, you don’t have to, you can use mine!  While I am trying to post once a week, sometimes that just doesn’t happen. But I am a BIG believer in having time to reflect or share. If you are also one of those people, but don’t want to maintain a full time blog, you can write a post or two to share out through my blog!  If you would like to guest blog, click on this link.

Tomorrow I’ll be attending and presenting at the EdTechRVA Conference in Richmond, so be sure to check out the blog later in the week on what I’ve got to share.  

This is usually where I sign off and tell you I will see you in three weeks, but I am going to record another episode earlier than normal.  As schools in the US are preparing for the possibility of closures and remote learning, many of us, including myself, have been putting together resources.  Across my district this week, administrators and members of the Instructional Technology team have been training teachers on the live conferencing tool available in Canvas. I’ve also participated in two different webinars to help prepare teachers and I want to share what I’ve learned as well as additional resources.  I will be recording this episode soon so watch my social media feeds and subscribe to my YouTube Channel to get all my latest videos.