01 Sep Five Google Forms Refreshers for the New School Year

Answering a reader’s question about Google Jamboard ideas that she should pass along to her colleagues prompted me to think about some “need to know” features of other Google Workspace tools for teachers. My mind turned to Google Forms as it is a tool that when used correctly can help be a huge time-saver for teachers. There are also features of Google Forms that can be beneficial to students. To that end, here are five Google Forms features that can help you and your students in the new school year. 

Answering a reader’s question about Google Jamboard ideas that she should pass along to her colleagues prompted me to think about some “need to know” features of other Google Workspace tools for teachers. My mind turned to Google Forms as it is a tool that when used correctly can help be a huge time-saver for teachers. There are also features of Google Forms that can be beneficial to students. To that end, here are five Google Forms features that can help you and your students in the new school year. Set Default Point Values If you’ve ever created a quiz in Google Forms only to discover that you forgot to assign point values, one small change to your preferences can make that a thing of the past. In your Google Forms preferences you can set a default point value for all questions that you add to your quiz. Here’s a video demo of how to do that. Create QR Codes for Google Forms I uses a Google Form as a sign-in/sign-out sheet for my classroom. Rather than making students type a link or find a link within Google Classroom, I simply printed a QR code for the Google Form and then taped it to the wall. Then students can simply use their phones to scan the code and access the Google Form to sign-out or sign-in. Making a QR code for a Google Form is easy thanks to a feature built into Google Chrome, here’s a video of how it works. Provide Instant Feedback to Responses I’ve long been a proponent of giving students practice quizzes and self-guided review activities via Google Forms. That’s because I can provide students with instant feedback on their responses. Not only can I tell them if their answers were correct or not, I can also provide them with additional information about why their answers were correct or not. I’ll often include links to additional information within my automated written feedback. Watch this video to see how to add answer feedback to Google Forms and see how students view that feedback. Require Complete Sentence Responses Google Forms has a setting called “response validation.” With that setting enabled you can require that students write a minimum number of letters or words in order to submit responses to your Google Form. This video shows you how to use the response validation settings to encourage students to write complete sentences. Combine Multiple Forms Into One Over the course of the school year I’ll make lots of Google Forms. Combining questions from those forms is an easy way to create a review activity for my students. Google Forms makes it easy to import questions from other forms into a new one. Here’s a demo of how to do that.Free Technology For Teachers, google forms, Google Workspace, how toRead More