The Power of Forms

One of the tools that got recommended over and over again at the CLS Tech conference was Google Forms, one of the many types of Google Docs you can make.  I think almost everyone on our team went to at least one session about using forms.  The talk Mary and I went to specifically about this was "Google Forms for Interventions, Assessments, and Classroom Walkthroughs" by Jody Oliver.  (presentation and sample forms here)

One of the great uses she shared with us for these was as a short formative assessment at the beginning or end of class (for our program, I thought we could even send them as homework).  You set up 3-5 questions to check for understanding and embed the form in your class web page or email it to students.  Students answer the questions and submit the form.  All the data goes to a spreadsheet where you can quickly look to see what problems were missed.  For even better analysis of the data, you can use a tool called Flubaroo which works with Google Docs.  Hints: Make all the questions required in order to submit the form.  Have a space for students to put their name.

In another talk, an English teacher described how she had a generic form on her web page which included a space for a name and then an open space for a typed answer.  She used this same form over and over again when she wanted to do a quick check for understanding and then emptied the resulting spreadsheet before asking the next question.

Jody also talked about using forms to do classroom walkthroughs when administrators are evaluating teachers and to share student concerns among staff.  For our small school where we don't see students every day, the latter use seems like a great idea.  Deb, who also went to a talk about Google Docs, even developed a form like that for us during the conference.