Writing with Forms and Autocrat

Have you ever tried to use Google Forms to help support student writing? 

Forms are a great way to help students organize writing. You can create the outline or graphic organizer using a form. Students complete the form and answer questions like: What's your claim, what evidence are you using, explain your reasoning, write a short conclusion... Teachers can then run the Autocrat add on to turn the form responses into a personalized essay outline for students. As a teacher, it makes it easy to look at specific elements like reasoning by going through the reasoning column on the spreadsheet (as opposed to reading the entire piece). If you add comments in another column before you run autocrat students can have feedback added to their outline. 

Create a Form

View the columns on the spreadsheet that you want. 

Run Autocrat and create a student created personalized outline for each student

Lit Trips/Google Earth Tours on Chromebooks

How to Convert a Google Earth Tour For Use On A Chromebook

I love my Samsung Chromebook! Sure, it does not have all the bells and whistles that my macbook does but it's light, durable, CHEAP and does almost everything I need it to do. However, I have always been frustrated that it is not possible to run Google Earth on the Chromebook. As a former geography teacher Google Earth gave my class access to the world. As Chromebooks continue to fill classrooms around the country it is important to know how you can convert tours and lit trips that have been created using Google Earth onto My Maps (formerly maps engine lite) which is accessible to Chromebooks. Google Lit Trips

Screen Shots from Google Earth

Screen Shots from MyMaps (maps engine)

Turn your films into EDpuzzle

                         Can You EDpuzzle?

If a picture is worth 1000 words, and a film has 24 pictures per second then 1 minute film should be the equivalent of 24,000 words, even if we round down. Though this metaphor may not be scientific, there should be no question about the power of film in class. Films provide a context for learning,  a record and a means of communication. Beyond that, they are a great tool to help build students curiosity. As a social studies teacher, allowing students to visually see primary or recreated images of people living during the depression provides a context to understand the time period. As a science teacher, it can provide a factual record of an experiment (as seen below). Teachers can use these films to communicate ideas and content to students. However classroom time is often to valuable to show lengthy films and students watching them at home lose the instructional benefit a teacher can add to a film. EDpuzzle, provides a platform for teachers to use film as instructional tool outside of the school day. It makes it possible to pause the video, insert audio comments and ask students questions. Send it out for homework and save the class time for something else! Can you EDpuzzle?

How to Get Started


A Science Example

Early Elections

Kahoot!

Is it time to update that Jeopardy PPT?

Look no further than Kahoot!

Kahoot! makes it easy to create questions in the form of an interactive quiz. Students can respond using many different devices quickly and easily.

5 Things Every Teacher Needs To Know About Google Forms
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The Bottom Line - Forms will change your world! They can help you collect and organize data, assignments, or student information. These are five of the basic, but most useful features that I believe forms offers teachers. 

1) How To Collect Digital Projects Using Google Forms
Forms is a great way to collect any digital assignment. It makes it easy to organize and access web links.

2) How to share and send your Google Form

Do you know how to share your form so your students can access it?

3) Using summary of responses to share live feedback

The summary feature automatically makes visual representations of the data collected from your form. Use it to poll your students and display their responses.

4) How can students edit their responses in Forms

Did you assign a form in class and students did not have time to finish it? Learn how to easily access forms that have already been submitted and change your responses.

5) Compare forms and identify students that did not complete it.

Want to learn how to quickly identify who did not complete the form? It is a little bit geeky, but  its not too hard.

Getting Geeky With Forms

Want to use the data in your form to send E-mails, merge documents, or push items out to students? As you continue to explore Google Forms, check out some of the Add Ons which allows the user to run a script that will tell the form to do something. Former teacher and Administrator Andrew Stillman has created many scripts with New Visions Cloud Lab. Find out more about them here.