You have a class of 20 students and they work at different speeds. You do your best to keep tabs on their performance in an activity, but really, with an average of 2.5 minutes to attend to each student in a 50 minute session, it isn’t easy. And you don’t stick at the same activity for a whole session do you? A bit frustrating at times, isn’t it? Google forms can help. Students can answer many types of questions such as multiple choice, choose from a list, checkboxes, scale, short text or paragraph answers. That gives you instant feedback on who has done the exercise and how well they have performed. You can design the form so that when you display the answers on the IWB (Interactive Whiteboard)via Apple TV, the student’s name is hidden. This way the whole class can see what other students are having problems with too, without anyone feeling threatened. It also provides the teacher with a sounder basis of what students really know, and so what areas need more work on and what feedback to provide. Plus, what to skip, as they can already do it.
Step 1
You give your students an activity to do that requires answers in any of the ways Google Forms can be set for – from multiple choice questions through to paragraph answers.
Step 2
Create the form in Google Drive (previously Google Docs).
Click on Create –> Select Form
Creating a form in Google Drive
When you view the Live form, just copy the url from the address to send to your students.
Google Form Live view
Step 2
You send the students the link to the live form – by email, creating a short url at tinyurl.com, or, as I do, have the students bookmark a webpage you have created on kl1p.com. This is a dynamic webpage which works a bit like Microsoft’s OneNote – you can write to it and instantly students can copy and paste from it. Warning – if they cut and paste, it’s gone!
Step 3
You display this form in spreadsheet view and give appropriate feedback. You can hide the student names by dragging the form along to hide that column.
