Creating Your Own 'DropBox' with Google Forms

Ever feel like you are in this situation?

• Want to give students the ability to decide what web tool to use for a project but don't want to receive an email from all of your students with the link to the product?
• Want to ask students to share a Google Document, Spreadsheet, or Presentation to your 'schoogle account' and they don't name it the way you asked.  This then causes an issue as you have to spend time searching for the right document in your own Google Drive account?

Google Form: This is a GREAT solution to the two situations stated above.  Google Forms is one of the options included in your Google Drive account. Several teachers at Bedford High have created what we are calling an Assignment Submission Form (the original idea came from a presentation I sat in given by Allison Mollica.  Basically, teachers are using the form option as a means of a dropbox.  Oh and did I mention that they are doing this with very little work.

Advantages to using this type of system:

• No more emails are sent to your account
• You can grade all student work from one spreadsheet as long as you have internet access
• You never need to change the link to your assignment submission form on your teacher website (even if you add assignment names to question 4 of the Google form)

Here are the suggested written steps regarding creating your own Assignment Submission Form:

A.  Create a new Google Form

B.  Name the Form

C.  Fill in your questions.  Suggested questions to ask in the form:

     1.  Last Name

     2.  First Name

     3.  Block

     4.  Assignment Name

     5.  Link to Assignment

D.  Choose a location for your Responses. (I usually say create a new spreadsheet with the name)

E.  Click on the View Live Form. Copy the link to this form and provide the link on your teacher website.

For those of you who are visual learners, I have also created a short video tutorial:

Creating Your Own Assignment Submission Form

For those of you who have a large number of students or you want to have some sort of system, watch this short video explaining how you can organize all of the student work in different tabs inside of the same Google Form.

Organizing Responses from Assignment Submission Form

So the next time you assign a task for students to complete, and it is web based (either through Google Drive or another web 2.0 tool) ask yourself, should I have them submit it through a form?

As always, if you ever have any questions, stop by room 222 and I will help you troubleshoot how this tool can be used in your situation.

Schoogle Away...

Transitioning to Teacher Google Sites

At the beginning of the school year, staff at BHS were told that they would have to make the transition of switching over their teacher websites to Google Sites.  This was done primarily for a couple of reasons.  1.  We have fully implemented using Google Apps for Education, so why not be in one location for everything.  2.  The current service that we use for teacher sites costs $23.00 per teacher.  As may already know, Google Sites is free.

I have been amazed with the number of staff that have already decided to make the switch.  Some staff have taken it upon themselves to figure it out, while other have received formal training from me.  Over the course of the school year, I will be providing more training at different levels (beginner versus advanced).  In order to help make the transition, I have created some videos showcasing how to create as well as manage a Google Site.  These videos have been broken up into no more than 4 or 5 minutes long highlighting different aspects of Google Sites.  To watch any of the videos from the 'Google Sites - Teacher Websites' playlist, CLICK HERE.  These videos highlight:

• Creating Site
• Creating New Page/Deleting a Page
• Customizing Theme, Fonts, Colors (look of a site)
• Allowing Ability to View Site on Mobile Devices
• 3 Ways to Report Assignments
• 2 Ways to Provide Resources
• Embedding Google Documents, Calendar, YouTube Videos
• Adding Image in Header of Site
• And more...

Teachers have been creative regarding how they are managing their own site.  Below is a list of 7 teacher sites.  My hope is that maybe one of these sites will showcase something you had not thought of that you can include in yours.

Mr. Cannon's Website (Humanities Teacher)

Mr. Zeller's Website (World Language Teacher)

Mr. Guerard's Website (Wellness Teacher)

Mrs. Morrissey's Website (Science Teacher)

Miss Mac's Website (World Language Teacher)

Mr. Ingram's Website (Humanities Teacher)

BHS Library's Website 

As always, if you have any questions regarding creating a Google Site, you know where to find me.  Room 222 is just around the corner...