I don't normally get this excited about a technology, but recently there have been a few things that have made me fall in love with Google Forms.
I use Forms to collect student submissions. Like many of you I taught in a pre-Google Classroom era that included a move to GAFE. The biggest issues was collecting student work. I loved and still do use Google Forms for collecting student work. It is an easy way to put all of my students work into one place. I end up with 1 document in my Google Drive to open and access student work. I taught my students to change the share settings to anyone with the link so I didn't receive a multitude of emails or have my shared with my part of my Drive flooded with assignments. Many of you likely know that Google Forms can be used as a self grading quiz with the assistance of Flubaroo. This is an amazing application to assist teachers with assessing student understanding. Here is an article about some other Add-ons There is one other Add-on that I also think can be very useful called Form Eliminator. This allows you to have the form remove choices once they have been selected by one one of the form respondents. This could be used to help teachers schedule meetings with parents for conferences. There are potentially other uses, but that could be explored in another post. The Magic of Google Forms
I had previously written about using Google My Maps in conjunction with Google Forms. I thought it was amazing to be able to connect maps together to create an interactive lesson.
I recently began exploring Google Forms feature of navigating pages based on the responses provided in multiple choice questions. Here is an example of a form template using that navigation. This is a very basic template to demonstrate the set up. Below is the template of the basic form that you can use to create your own quiz.
Along the way I learned how creating navigation pages allows you to create opportunities to reteach students or provide more information to guide them in their completion of the activity. By creating the path of navigation and requiring students to answer the question, they must choose the correct response in order to progress through the form. Here is another form with some basic content. The form in the link shows how you can add a path to incorrect responses and add additional content or instruction to assist the students.
I also learned how to add video into the form to both create questions and redirect the participant. This could be used to reteach concepts or create a whole new path in the form. I have included that aspect in the form above.
While exploring the potential of Google Forms I came across the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure. The examples I saw were very simple stories with more choices than content. I created a basic template for making a story adventure that you could have your students use to create original works of literature that provide the audience and abundance of choice and interaction. I included an example of the form and the template below. Think about the potential of having students write stories where their reader has to make choices. What an amazing creative process this may be. I was discussing this with my 3rd grader and I used the story of the wolf in the Three Little Pigs as an example. What if the wolf made different choices along the way? What if when he gets to the brick house and is unsuccessful the reader gets to make a choice- does the go on the room to slide down the chimney, or does he go home hungry? What would change if he left the pigs hold up in their brick house and headed through the woods on his way home and he met a little girl in a red hoodie? What potential choices could your students create for their readers? I am also working on an example for history. I love the show Quantum Leap and am putting together a CYOA example and template for creating a learning activity as well.
My next revelation came when a colleague shared with me a BreakoutEDU project he heard about where the teacher used Google Forms to collect student submissions. Video below.
The whole BreakoutEdu activity in itself is pretty amazing, but the part that sent rockets bursting in air for me was the section where he discusses Data Validation. This is exactly what a math teacher I am working with is looking for. He wants to provide students opportunities to review concepts and work through problems with immediate feedback. We are looking at using the multiple choice with the opportunity to redirect as mentioned above, but wondered if students might just guess until they get it correct.
Data Validation is an advanced feature in text, and paragraph responses that provides the creator with controls over the participants ability to navigate further. You can create a text response question where the text must contain a specific answer in order to be correct and allow for further navigation by the participant. Imagine in the Amazing Race if students were forced to provide a correct answer about the content they are engaging in before they can move to the next task. This would assist in the flow of the activity by eliminating the need of the teacher to check students responses during or after the activity to determine a winner. The winner would be more easily determined by who was able to submit the completed form first. The use of Data Validation in review activities again provides students immediate feedback, but would be easier set up than the MC page navigation. The drawback is it is limited in providing differentiated paths or opportunities to reteach based on student responses like the Basic Template provided above. Why am I so excited about Google Forms?
I see incredible potential for creating learning opportunities for students. It can be used as a pre-assessment, a collection of tasks, a self directed review or activity or an imaginative writing opportunity.
All of these examples, and there are likely many more, are ways to put students in the drivers seat of their learning. They can engage in learning activities without relying on the teacher. It can create differentiated instruction allowing students to progress at their own pace. When students are given access to the template, or shown how to create their own, they can unlock the tools potential to create their own content. They can make their own amazing stories, or engage in the creation of others. They could engage in these forms as part of a scavenger hunt. I am excited to share these forms and ideas in the hopes it sparks your creativity and that you will share with me the amazing things you do with them. I will update this post as I finalize my forms and create more templates for you and your students to use. I hope you are able to find something here that resonates with you on how to use or create a Google Form to meet your needs. Additional Ideas
I said I would update when I thought of new ways. Well 10 minutes after heading to bed last night about midnight, I had to get up and jot some ideas down. - These ideas are pretty raw right now, I will revise as I further develop them, but I needed to get them down on paper.
Provide . My first thought is rewrite a fairy tale. Here is a sample of the Three Little Pigs You include the basis of the story but allow them to enter in a paragraph text the ending they choose and then share the results in a google form. You could provide students two choices- Say the wolf in the Three Little Pigs- The wolf comes across three little pigs building their homes, one of straw, one of sticks and one of brick. The wolf is very hungry, what does he decide to do? Let students create their own endings based on which choice they provide for the wolf. The writing could be done in a Google Doc and then pasted into a Google Form so the teacher has access to all of the writing in one place. With the student writings, the teacher could take the students endings and put them into the original form and create alternative endings that interweave. Or better yet the students could do this and create a choice filled exploration reading experience. They would just have to add connecting text between one journey and the next for the potential endings they think best fit their story. Provide a video clip or an excerpt from a story maybe up to a critical point and then give them the task of writing the ending and ask students to write the next section, or analyze the content. You can easily add video clips to forms. This could be used to teach or reteach content as you could match it with questions to be answered. This could also allow students to analyze characters while being able rewatch the video clip to help reinforce their thinking. Watershed moments-- The What if... moments of history? What if Truman never dropped the Atomic Bomb? What if humans never discovered how to control fire? What if... Have students ponder these moments and create responses to these. Students could be given a choice in historical situation- Your civilization has just been attacked by outsiders who are angry about... How do you respond? Do you A or B or C - then create paths for students to embark on. When students get good at this, flip it and have them create What if or Watershed moment journeys for their peers. It could be an exercise in writing historical fiction, or when students do it analyzing the impact of decisions of the past. One path would be what really happened in history, the others would be what they think might have happened if the decision or event had not taken place. Data Validation allows you to set limits in Paragraph text. You could set a minimum number of characters to ensure students are providing answers beyond yes and no. Or set a maximum of 140 and allow students to create a Twitter conversation between two characters- What would two presidents sound like discussing a current social or political issue? What would characters of two different books talk about? How would so and so explain an important concept to...? Scavenger Hunt- This could combine the multiple choice or text with validation format to create an interactive activity where students would have to answer questions or solve problems to find the next clue or activity. I am thinking this could be done in multiple subject areas and I am working on creating some content for PD sessions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2016
Categories |