Using Google Forms

The tool I chose to familiarize myself with was Google Forms. I have some experience with other apps in Google Drive, but hadn't used Forms before. I would say that this feature is a 5 out of 10  (10 being the hardest) when it comes to setup and ease of use. Some features were user friendly and some parts took me a few minutes to figure out. I feel like I have a basic understanding of this tool at this point and my tutorial reflects this basic understanding. I think that Forms could be a really cool way to gather lots of data about student interests, especially in the first week of school. Typically I give students getting to know you surveys that take me a LONG time to go through. Forms could definitely save me some time there. Additionally, this would be a good tool to use for formative assessment, such as a brief quiz. I'd have to play around with it more to figure out the settings for recording scores and linking the survey with particular individuals. I'm not sure how this would work (or if it's even possible). Either way, this is a really cool tool and could be used in a lot of interesting ways! 

Google Forms Tutorial:

Step 1: Log into your Gmail account (www.gmail.com)

Step 2: Look for a small cube in the top right corner (the apps icon). It looks like the cube below-

Step 3: Click on the cube and scroll through or search the available apps. Look for the app that says "Forms."

Step 4: Once you've clicked on the app, open up your first form!

Step 5: Select the settings for your form, this list looks like this:

 

This is a great way to make a test or survey for students to take and these small setting adjustments allow you to tweak your form.

Step 6: To name your form, simply hover over where it says "Untitled Form" in bold font. Click on this and begin typing the name of your form.

Step 7: The next step will be to write your questions. I wrote a sample question and was able to select from a variety of answering methods. Here's what the box for question making will look like-

You can choose all types of answering methods. I like the option for multiple choice, but there's even an option for a written paragraph response! Here you can also make the question required or not required. If you're writing a quiz, I'd assume that you would want all questions to be required! 

Step 8: When you are ready to add another question, simply click on the "add item" box. You may add a variety of types of questions. The box looks like this-

Step 9: Continue adding the desired amount of questions by using the "add item" feature.

Step 10: When you are ready to share your survey/test/quiz with your students, simply click on "send form." The tab looks like this-

Step 11: Once you click on the tab to send the form, you have a couple of different options. Either you can choose to embed the link (copy and paste the link provided) to your form on your own blog or website (I put it on my blog here for you to see). OR you may choose to share the form with people with a variety of email addresses. I think the embedding option would work best with a number of students, this way you wouldn't have to share the link individually with everyone. 

Step 12: Finally, you can click the done button and wait for your results to come in! I have never tried using this with students, so I'm unsure of all of the formatting options for results. There is a "view responses" tab at the top of the form, so as responses come in you could check here and play around with different formats for results. 

--

Brittany DeMelo

7th Grade Geography