Google Form Tip: How to Prepopulate a List in "Choose From a List"

As I'm sure many of us know, even when you think you are well-versed in any aspect of life, there is always more to learn! Case and point- this trick from my colleague +Kevin O'Donnell . He created a Form  for his students in his 8th grade technology classes this semester. Students will work for the first 10-15 minutes independently on https://educourses.withgoogle.com.  After completing the independent work for that class, students will report their progress using the Form.

Upon first seeing the drop down boxes, I was shocked how much information Kevin had put in and thought of how much time that much have taken! Until he stopped me in the hall later that day and explained that he prepopulated the dropdown boxes using a list. Genius! What a time saver! View the tutorial below and find out how to use this time-saving trick yourself!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Forms! Day 7- Drop Box

If you are anything like me, when you first started with Google Apps for Education, your "Shared With Me" folder quickly exploded with students submissions. You had a powerful new tool, and you were excited to use it! However, the organization quickly becomes a nightmare.

There are many different ways to organize your assignments from your students. You can have students share a folder with you, but then you have to go through each folder individually to search for assignments. I just started using gClassFolders, which creates a specific Assignments folder, but you will have to look for different Assignments folders for each class or subgroup.

Or, you can use a Form! This is another form from the Template Gallery, and it was created by Todd Roth. Think of it as the application Drop Box- because that's what it is! Students fill out basic information such as their names and class period, along with the Title of the assignment. (As a side note, creating a specific naming convention for all assignments such as LAST, FIRST PERIOD # DATE can make your life a lot simpler, and then you won't have students asking every time).Then, students simply copy and paste the URL of their assignment. Students needs to make sure that under Sharing, they select you specifically, or Anyone with the Link so you can view the assignment.

Once all students have submitted the Form, all of their assignments will be in one Sheet, and it will be quite easy to access. Here is the link to the Form from the Template Gallery.

Thanks to all of you who have checked back each day to see my Favorite Forms. It has been a challenge to blog every day, but I have reached so many new people in doing so! In the coming weeks, I hope to dive in a little deeper into Forms and other Apps.

Is there something else YOU want to know about Forms? Any other topics you'd like to see me cover? Let me know! Until next time...

These Are a Few of My Favorite Forms! Day 6- Reading Interest Inventory

Sorry I didn't get a chance to post a form last night! My husband and I went out on the town for Date Night. On a side note, if you haven't seen American Hustle, it's definitely worth it!

Anywho, back to the Forms! Last year when I started teaching in a self-contained classroom, I spent a while looking for a Reading Interest Inventory to give my students that was 1. easy to read, 2. gave lots of examples of reading genres/materials, and 3. was visually appealing. I ended up going with an Interest Inventory that was only one out of the three. When it was time to use one again this year, I found one  that was a little better, but getting paper responses was not very functional for me. If I had only known about this Form!

Unlike most of the other Forms I've featured this week, I did not create this one. I am a firm believer in the educational (and life) philosophies of "Don't reinvent the wheel" and "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". So I headed over to the Google Drive Template Gallery to look for a Reading Interest Inventory that fit my three original criteria. Well, this Form by Donalyn Miller, based on the Interest-A-Lyzer by Joseph S. Rensulli, does the trick and then some! In addition to what I was looking for, it also poses questions such as "When do you like to read?" and "The last three books I read are...".

The beauty of doing this Reading Interest Inventory in a Form is how easy it will be to access and review the data in Sheets. You can organize reading groups based on interest, have students who are active readers paired with those who are not to spread the book reading joy, or even pass the information along to your Librarian or Media Specialist for book recommendations.

If you would like to use it, here is a link to the Template in the gallery. Note that this template is still in the old Form format, so it will be much different that many of us are used to. Still worth it!

Tomorrow's Final Form: Tune in to find out!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Forms! Day 5- Test Review

So it's the day before a test or summative assessment. How can you prepare your students, review key terms and important ideas, and find out where each student feels comfortable or needs more help? Easy, use a Google Form!

One of my favorite features, aside from embedding videos, is the ability to make a multiple page Form. Many of my students have attention issues, and putting too much on one webpage can be overwhelming for them. Also, doing a huge review of many different problem types can be too much. So instead I choose the 3 most important skills or concepts that I feel my students need to be reviewed. For each skill or concept, I choose a video and add questions that review vocabulary and extend the learning to complete a problem similar to the types of problems presented in the video. Each video, along with the accompanying questions, has its own page.

On the final page, I ask the students to reflect on their level of preparedness, as well as what, if any, topics they would like me to review with them. This allows me to create flexible groupings for review, or create collaborative groups where students can "teach" the concepts to each.

How could you use this type of Form in your own classroom? Click here, "Make a Copy", and adapt it to your needs!


Tomorrow's Form: Reading Interest Inventory

These Are a Few of My Favorite Forms! Day 4- Embedded Videos

I have to say, of the many different uses of forms that I have shared and will share, this is the form type I use most frequently. This form has so many different uses, I will first explain how I use them, and then explain some different ways you can use them for your own classroom.

If you're familiar with my blog, you know that I am a self-contained Special Education teacher. Teaching 3 grade levels at one time in a subject like Math is nearly impossible, so 90% of the time we do station work. My three stations usually include direct instruction with me, independent practice and cooperative review games at our back table, and a Google Form followed by some online Math games.

Depending on the rotation for the day, students will complete a form with an embedded video that reviews the topic from that day's or a previous day's lesson, or introduces a new topic. Because I am teaching students who typically preform below grade level, I tend to keep questions to a more basic comprehension or knowledge level.

It's important to note that you can only import videos from YouTube, so if your school blocks YouTube this will not work for you. If you do have access to YouTube, then you have access to a lot of great resources! I plan on doing a future post about some of my favorite YouTube Education channels, but here are some that I use for my math videos: Khan Academy, Learnzillion which offers over 2,000 videos that correlate directly to Common Core, and eHow Education.

So how can you use this form in your classroom? If you're already using Blended Learning or Flipped Classroom, this is perfect for you! You can also use this as a Do Now or Exit Ticket if your students don't have Internet access at home. Forms also lend themselves perfectly to differentiation! Some students may need the prompting of multiple choice and select from a list questions, while others can handle fill in the blank, and still other need more challenging, application or synthesis questions. Using the same video, you can differentiate to all your students. Just "Make a Copy" and differentiate as appropriate.

Here, you can access this form. Make sure to "Make a Copy" before playing around.

Tomorrow's Form: Test review

These Are a Few of My Favorite Forms! Day 3- Pre and Post-Assessments

Today's form is an idea that my friend and co-worker +Stephanie Travers came up with. She teaches 7th and 8th grade ELA, and found at the end of Unit 1 that there were some grammar standards to cover that weren't explicitly taught up to that point.

No matter what subject, we all come to that one standard that just doesn't fit the unit, but we know we have to cover. This is an example of a quick assessment that you can do before and after a lesson to demonstrate mastery of the standard.

This particular form we gave when reviewing the difference between active and passive voice. Though this is something that gets touched on here and there throughout the year, we decided to use this form before and after a lesson where we explicitly taught active and passive voice. Nearly 100% of students mastered the standard as measured by the form.

Want a copy of your own? Click here, and make sure you "Make a Copy" before you start playing with the form!

Tomorrow's Form: Youtube videos and comprehension/application questions.

P.S. Want to make your life easier? No need to have separate copies of the form. After your students take the pre-assessment, follow these simple steps to put their post-assessments answers on a new sheet in the same spreadsheet.

First, go back into your form and select "Responses" and then "Change Response Destination".

A new window will open. It will automatically select "New Spreadsheet". Instead, select "New sheet in an existing spreadsheet".

Next, select the name of the spreadsheet from your original form.

Finally, open your original spreadsheet. You should notice a new tab at the bottom, which will house the responses of your students when they retake the assessment.

And that's it! I might make a video demo of this later on, but for now I hope the pictures are helpful!

There Are a Few of My Favorite Forms! Day 2- Group Work Survey

In an age that encourages collaboration, teachers need to be realistic in their expectations for group work. Is every group going to split the work evenly between each group member every time? No. Are there going to be kids who end up doing all the work on a particular day? Possibly. So how do we see these challenges, and then do something about it? Well, ask the kids!

Although students don't necessarily want to "rat" on each other, they are probably more likely to mention how work is being split and how their group is functioning when they are given you written feedback. This Google Form is useful in those instances. Not only does it ask students to evaluate their personal contributions, but the contributions of others and how much work was actually completed.

This is a rather generic Form, and could be easily modified to ask more specific questions and get more in-depth feedback, but it's a place to start! Click here to get your own, just make sure you "Make a Copy"! Let me know what you think.


Tomorrow's Form: Pre and Post-Lesson Assessments