Gathering Information using Google Forms

Have you ever thought of using Google Forms to gather information about your students?  Mrs. Reilly has been using this feature in her Piano class most recently.  For those of you who are unaware, Google Forms is one of the features of Google Docs.  It is very easy to create one.  You are able to choose the type of questions (such as multiple choice, short answer), as well as the theme of the form.  As you can see, Mrs. Reilly picked the one pertaining to pianos.  Not only is it very easy to make, the form converts all of the answers into a Google Spreadsheet for easy viewing and analyzing.  How do the students get to the form you ask?  It is quite easy.  Make sure that you give students permission to view the form as long as they have the direct link.   

I actually used this feature at the end of the year last year to gather information from my students in regards to how I did an a teacher.  I do this each and every year, however, this was the first time that I actually did it online.  To my surprise, I actually received more thoughtful responses than I ever did when I required students to complete the form by hand.  Plus, because I did not ask for their name, I truly got confidential responses back.  I will definitely use this feature in the future.

Mr. Zeller has been looking into using the feature to actually gather formative data from his students.  There is an actual script that you can embed into Google Forms so that it will actually grade the responses that students gave.  It is called Flubaroo.  With this feature, you create the answer key.  It will grade the responses for you, let you know which questions were an issue for the class as a whole, as well as send an email back to the students to let them know how they did with an optional response from the teacher; all in one email.  For more information, feel free to see me and we can chat about this!

 The possibilities are endless as to how you can use this feature.