google forms

I have moved into the digital age. I've now got a smartphone, and with that I'm far more able to check twitter. Typically I will stumble across something that might be interesting or promising and star it for later viewing (like when I am at my laptop!). This morning I stumbled across a re-tweet from Web20classroom, someone who passes along a plethora of stuff on a daily basis. The post was in regards to a google doc someone had created about using Google Forms in the classroom.

I hadn't even thought about using Google Forms. In fact, I'll confess that I'd never used Google Forms before. But I messed around with it this morning, and am considering using it with a small test group of students in the coming weeks. To the left you'll see an image of a small test form I created. I wanted to see the mechanics of the process... and here is my understanding.

• Start by creating a form through Google Docs.
• You toy around with the questions you want your kids to fill out or respond to.
• You can make the questions required or optional.
• Then you link it to a website (perhaps a class website or wiki- I'll likely do both, duplicity is a good thing). You can email it to your users also, but I am not sure that I'll do that as of yet.
• Then you get to the best part... once the kids go online to type in their responses, they submit it... populating a Google Docs spreadsheet for you! How great! Instead of the paper trail, you've now got it all in one place. I can then email feedback if you wanted to go that route.

How do I envision using it? I'll likely use it for my weekly Fact/Question/Response sheets during our novel study. I might also use it for my end of year reading/literacy surveys. I'll start by using a test group of 5-10 kids, some from each of my rotation groups. Then I'll likely use it as an option- if you want the paper version you can use it, otherwise go the online version (that way I don't have the issue of student access which is inevitable, even though it is far from the majority for me). I'm excited. A new idea to test out.