Google Forms is a great tool for teachers to use. Most
people rave about the utility of Docs and Presentations…. These are great too.
There are so many possible uses for Forms in the classroom. One can survey a
class, utilize it for “March Madness” takes on history, and create a DBQ with
answer sheet for students. One of my favorite ways to use it is to collect
student work. This is an especially great tool when students be presenting
their work. If collecting digital products ahead of time, it makes for seamless
class management. You will have all the assignments, no need for students to
log in to sites to pull up their project, student groups unable to go because
person x is absent, or group y can’t go because person z left their flash drive
at home…You will have all products ahead of time.
Forms are quite
simple to use. Select Form from the Google
Drive Create button. Select the theme you would like to use, you can always go
back and change this later on. I would suggest labeling the form with template
at the end. I have found that creating a folder with your templates allows you
to easily make copies for additional class periods and the years to follow.
Select the type of question you want to ask and type away. If you want a
question to be required, check the required box and students MUST answer this
before submitting the form. You can even embed an image or video into your
form. If you decide that you want to move questions around or copy a question
to make minor modifications you can easily do this as well.
Once you are finished creating the Form, select how you want
to issue it. As mentioned earlier, it is easy to select Make a Copy under file
to copy a form and add the class period at the end if you wish. Make sure you
select Accepting Responses to make the form live. Select the blue Send button
to share the form. You can email the form, get a link to hyperlink to on your
own class website, or get an embed code to embed on your class website. Once
you have responses, you can go to your responses spreadsheet of select view responses.
Responses will be time stamped. You can also select view Summary of Responses
to view responses in a graph format for easy visualization.
Here are some sample Google Forms as a semester survey, to collect student
work, and as a DBQ.
