I'm an English teacher. Isn't it enough that I already confessed my dirty little secret, that I love spreadsheets? I already paid homage to my family lineage of accountants and bookkeepers in an earlier blog. I love numbers. I love sorting data. Google Forms is awesome. I've said it.
The dirty laundry is already swaying in the breeze- and yet here I've found a few more items to hang on the line, thanks to blog posts by Matt Miller and Keith Hamon, and trying out a few more writing hacks inspired by the marvelous Catlin Tucker. I mentioned in an earlier post that I already love using Forms for self-grading quizzes, student rosters, pre- and post- tests, student reflections, and quick surveys among my colleagues. Here's a few more uses that are new to me:
- Specific, Standards-Based Peer Feedback: Peer feedback has an overwhelmingly positive impact on learning. Unfortunately, most peer feedback is incorrect. In other words, my students care more about what their peers think, than what I think, and their version of peer feedback is usually, "Good job. You misspelled a word." Michael McDowell, author of Rigorous PBL by Design, synthesized research from John Hattie and Graham Nuthall to produce some brilliant research to confirm what I see on a daily basis. Enter Google Forms! In a recent project, my students went through three cycles of peer feedback. For each cycle, I created a Form for them to use that evaluated the project based on one standard at a time. Then I really jazzed things up with AutoCrat; it automatically sent an evaluation to the groups' inbox. Instead of hearing students murmuring a weak, "It's good." I heard them giving each other feedback like, "Your volume was low and you needed more emotion, but you made good eye contact." Voila! (The AutoCrat-ted results looked like this.)
- Forms as a Writing Template: Inspired by Catlin Tucker, I recently used Forms as a writing template for my students. Their assignment was to write a movie pitch, a format I knew would be challenging for some of my struggling writers. So, rather than writing sentence stems on the board, I created a Form with sentence stems built in. Students filled it out, and by the wonder of AutoCrat, received a paragraph-version of what they typed in their inbox. From there, they could edit and revise as needed. This was especially useful because I wanted to lessen my students' cognitive load: I wanted them to focus on their ideas, without having to worry about how to format a professional-looking movie pitch. (Want to try it out? Here's what my students used.)
- "Insurance" for Flipped Learning (haven't tried it yet): I find, like Keith Hamon, that if there is not a grade attached to work done outside of class, students won't do it. Using Forms to create a quick assessment for a flipped learning assignment both: a) grades students on their knowledge, and b) serves as a formative to better direct the face-to-face class time.
- Exit Ticket Template (haven't tried it yet): I've been using Forms for exit tickets for a couple years now, because they're so fast and straightforward for both me and my students. I didn't realize until reading Matt Miller's blog that fast could be made even faster with a template. How could you not use that? I read about this just in time for my school year to end, but I'll definitely be trying it out next year.
- Late Work Submission (haven't tried it yet): I always make sure Forms will not email me with student responses. Until reading Matt Miller's blog, however, I never thought about using that option for late work. What a good idea! I constantly have students submitting their late work through Echo, and I have to remind them to send me a follow-up email so I remember to look for it and give it a grade. A late work form is a great way to simplify that process, as well as keep record of what was turned in, by whom, and when.