Google Apps for Education Part 3 - Google Forms

Google Forms is a great tool to gather all types of information from students. This is a Google App that does not have a corresponding Microsoft product. Essentially, Google Forms is software that allows you to easily create a form, have people fill it out, and then the data is sent directly to a Google Spreadsheet (like Excel). Our school has used this in administrative ways as well as an assessment tool in the classroom. As a school, we have had high school students register for elective classes, put in lunch requests for a trip, register for our Open House, etc. The possibilities are endless; just think of a situation where you want to gather information from a lot of people and this is a great option.

Teachers can use this tool in different ways. You can send a form to your students the day before school as a "get to know you" activity so you can come into class the first day with some information about your students. You can give entire homework assignments with short answer, multiple choice, true/false and matching questions. You can flip your classroom and give the students a video to watch and hold them responsible for the content by requiring them to answer a few questions on the video. The best part of all is that all the information goes into one simple spreadsheet.

If you want to get a little fancier, a few months ago Google Forms began allowing you to embed a youtube video within a form. So now you can create a video and have it along with the homework questions all within the same link. CLICK HERE to see an example I recently did in my 12th grade class. See below for a few examples of how other teachers have used Google Forms in their classroom.

How will you know if someone filled out a form? Either you can check your Google Drive file every day, or you can turn on notifications and get an email any time the form is filled out. To set this up, go into the backend Google Spreadsheet that is created (see videos below), go to tools, Notification rules, and choose how and when you want to be notified.

To learn how to create Google Forms, watch the two videos below:

1. Google Apps #5 - Google Forms Part 1

2. Google Apps #6 - Google Forms Part 2

Examples of other teachers using Google Forms
1.  Student Reading Log
2. Sample Form to Track an Assignment
3. 80 + Google Forms for the Classroom
4. 74 Interesting Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom

Other Resources
1. 6 Things You Might Not Have Know You can Do in Google Forms
          a. Youtube video
          b. Print Version
2. Webinar on Advanced Forms
3. Innovative Ideas for Using Google Forms
4.  80 Interesting Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom
5. How to Use Google Forms to make self-grading quizzes


Links to Previous Videos
1. How to Create a Screencast
2. How to Create a Screencast from an iPad
3. Introduction to Gmail (by Aaron Fleksher)
4. Google Calendar (by Aaron Fleksher)
5. Google Drive #1

6. Google Docs Part 1: Creating and Collaborating
7. Google Docs Part 2: More on Collaborating and Sharing
8. Google Sheets and Presentations