Technology: Use Google Forms to Get Focused

  • Google Forms is an app that is becoming increasingly popular among teachers for its ability to easily and quickly create rubrics, assignments, and assessments. It can also be used as classroom management tool.

    Forms is a sidekick to “Sheets”, Google’s spreadsheet app. Combined with an add-on called Flubaroo that makes grading quick and easy, Forms is becoming a staple of the classroom.

    What are Google Forms?

    Google Forms —along with Docs, Sheets, and Slides—is part of Google’s online suite of education tools to help teachers get more done in a shorter span of time. Forms is easy to use and one of the simplest ways to save data directly to a spreadsheet. Forms allow educators to creatively teach classroom material, collaborate with students, and design innovative assignments to achieve meaningful outcomes.

    • Be Informed!

      Sign up for updates on courses, giveaways, news impacting education and workshops.

    Google Forms can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. Forms can be used as KWL, pre-assessments, Daily 5 Check-in, formative assessments, summative assessments, surveys, reflections, evaluations, lunch count, parent surveys, behavior/mood check-ins, discipline logs, exit cards, and more.

    Some common examples of using Forms in the classroom include:

    Creating tests — You can then choose to show missed and correct answers, as well as a value for each option if you’d like. Answers are saved in Google forms and can be transferred to a spreadsheet.

    Sharing with colleagues — Teachers can share the core Form with others to let them help build and edit the Form.

    Contact Forms – Share updates with students and parents. In the response options, you can let users submit a response, edit their responses, or see a summary of all responses.  

    Sign-in sheets

    Feedback Forms – Get responses from students on various topics. What did they like about a particular subject of study? What did they not like?

    Whether a teacher needs a contact form or a checkout page, a survey or a student directory, a form allows them to easily gather information. It streamlines grading, sharing and parent communication. It also helps keep administrative tasks running like clockwork for improved classroom management.

    There are more than 50 creative uses of the Google Forms application. Google Forms are most often used to differentiate learning, accelerate grading and automatically assess student progress. Google Forms are effectively used in a flipped classroom or blended learning environment.

    How are Google Forms helpful for teachers?

    The idea behind Forms is to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity and promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness. This is done by engaging with students in a collaborative virtual environment.

    Teachers can also use Forms to engage in professional growth and leadership by participating in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning. In doing so, they contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of the school and community.

    Forms can be used to design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments. Forms can also use be used to customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources.

    Make grading quick and easy

    An add-on to Forms/Sheets is a grading tool called Flubaroo. The app allows teachers to quickly grade and analyze student performance on multiple choice and fill-in assignments. Teachers are quickly able to:

    • Get scores for each student and identify students in need of extra help
    • View average score, and a histogram of scores
    • Quickly identify questions that a majority of the students missed
    • Share scores with students via email or Google Drive, along with optional notes to the class and/or to each student
    • Assign your own score to open-ended questions
    • Send stickers and badges when you share grades

    Getting started with Google Forms

    Professional development courses on the use of Google Forms in the classroom align with Common Core Standards.

    The focus for teachers in such a class includes learning the specific skills necessary to create Google Forms that differentiate learning and can be used in a flipped or blended Learning environment. This goes beyond learning the skills of creating a Form. In a course, participants will have the opportunity:

    • To gain an understanding of the many uses of Google Forms
    • To create and share basic Forms
    • To use Flubaroo to automatically grade results
    • To create Forms that differentiate
    • To create self-paced lessons using Forms
    • To create templates to be automatically populated with Forms