The Tech Messengers series is back this week with a new episode. This week, Eric DeMarco talks about how he is using Google Documents and Presentations with his class in a more dynamic way. Through the use of the commenting feature, Eric has his students asking questions of the presenters and leaving comments for their review. He is also using comments in Docs to create an online exam review space built by the students. Learn more about how Eric has leveraged Google Docs in his classroom below...
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Remember Scantron sheets? I think I have created a form that is the 21st century equivalent. If you are not interested in spending less time scoring assessments...you should stop reading now.
As I was cleaning up my Google Drive account I found a spreadsheet/form that I created back in the beginning of the year for teachers at Seymour High School who were using Google forms for assessment. Using a few simple formulas, I was able to have the spreadsheet automatically score student responses but I also added some functionality to have the student's score and comments e-mailed to them. It's pretty cool.
To try out this assessment collector, click here and make yourself a new copy for your Drive account.
After you have saved it to your account your are ready to modify the questions to fit your assessment. If you are familiar with creating Google Forms this will be a piece of cake but if not you can check out this tutorial to get you through it.
Once you have included your questions on the form it's time to input the answers in order to have them corrected automatically. Start by taking the actual quiz yourself...hopefully you get a hundred. In the name field you can put something like "Answer Key" and use your e-mail address.
Note: If you would rather watch a video tutorial (vs reading the text version) on how to modify the form, scroll down.
In order to get the spreadsheet to auto-correct you have to use a formula further down the line to assign a point value for each correct response. So...in the "Sample Quiz" form for cell L2 you should have =IF(E2="answer",1,0) where answer is the correct answer to the question. You can use multiple choice or it could be short answer but whatever you type inside the parentheses will be the only accepted response. You will need to do this for the rest of your questions. Moving along the next formula would be in cell M2 where you would put =IF(F2="answer",1,0). Essentially the formula is saying to check cell F2 and if the correct answer is there put a one in M2. If the correct answer is not present it puts in a zero.
To tally up the score you will need to use the formula =sum(L2:P2) in cell J2.
The next step is to add your comments in to column K. This is where you can offer feedback to the student about how they did and their areas of strength and weakness.
Once you have put in your comments, you click on a cell in the row you want to send then click on "Teacher Menu" and "Send Scores & Comments". That's it...you're done!
To watch the video equivalent of these directions see below:
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Using a form like this will get you fast, informative data that you can use in your classroom to guide your instruction. The fact that you can add anecdotal feedback is what separates this form from the rest of the pack. I hope that you find it useful and please share it with your colleagues.
Last week Google made an announcement which seems to be long overdue. For a while, comments have been something available in Google documents but not in spreadsheets. This is no longer the case. The next time you are working with a Google spreadsheet or the results of a Google form, you will see the ability to add comments as well as include notes for single cells. These two features are very useful and easily applied. To add a comment to a cell, choose Comment from the Insert menu. To add a note, it's the same process but instead choose Note. A comment is denoted by a yellow triangle in the top right hand corner of the cell while a note is represented by a black triangle. In addition, a cool feature is the ability to comment directly to another user by typing a plus sign followed by their email address, like this: +johndoe@google.com. That person will then receive an email with your comment.
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Creating a conversation in spreadsheets allows multiple users the opportunity to discuss the results or add notes for other users to view. This is a great way to increase collaboration among students who are working on a shared document or spreadsheet.
Last week I was working with a student in Google Docs and as I peered over to the right hand side of the document (usually a continuation of the page) there it was...a research tool to use within Docs. Essentially it is like a little Google Search right there within your document. You can search the web, images, places, even quotations to use in your document. One of the most useful features in my opinion is the ability to cite a footnote right from within your document. All you have to do is place your cursor where you want to create a citation and then hover over the site in the research tool and click on "cite". It will add the superscript number and also the footnote at the bottom of the page. Check out the screenshot below to see the research tool in action.
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The research feature in Google Docs is just one of the many reasons that I find Google Docs to be an excellent alternative to proprietary word processing programs. It is also a demonstration of the fluid nature of the program and how updates are constantly being developed. This tool is obviously excellent for students to use while they are working on a research paper but also teachers who are developing plans or documents.
With the creation of Google Drive there have been some really great updates to Google Docs. On the Google Docs blog I discovered the creation of the following useful changes (amongst others):
Over 450 new font additions to Google Docs.
There are now a few more options for inserting images in Docs, including inserting from Google Drive, searching for images from the LIFE Photo archive, or taking a snapshot with your webcam.
Charts in spreadsheets now has support for minor gridlines and options to customize the formats of axis labels .
From File > Page setup... you can now set the default page size for your new documents.
An increase in the allowed attachment size in emails from 5MB to 25MB.
An increase in the size of docs files you can create from 2MB to 50MB.
There are now over 60 new templates in our template gallery.
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And here you just thought that Google created Drive to house all of your documents. It seems like Google Drive is going to make a real push for your online storage needs as well as your document creation, publishing and sharing needs. For those of you who are using Google Docs exclusively instead of other proprietary (more expensive) options, this is a terrific development!
For a while now I have been using Google Docs in conjunction with Dropbox to save files to the cloud for access on the web. Recently, Google introduced a new name for docs and added some great features for saving, publishing and sharing files online. Google Drive is a cloud based file storage solution that also incorporates Google Docs and some elements of Google Plus as well.
After uploading or creating a file in Google Drive you can share it as you would previously in Docs publicly or with a link. New to Google Drive is the ability to discuss files and folders with others on the web and also one click sharing to your Google Plus circles. Some of the new features that I really think will be useful are the search feature which will allow you to not only search text in docs files but also scanned files. I also liked that Google Drive will allow you to open all file types right within the application including those files that require a special program such as Photoshop files and PDFs. For more information about Google Drive check out the video below.
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Google Drive is another service which is free and accessible form anywhere with a network connection. These cloud based storage solutions are great for students who do not want to carry around a flash or e-mail files back and forth. The new feature which allows for threaded comments could be quite useful for students sharing files back and forth with one another or the teacher. Currently Google Drive is offering 5GB of free storage.
Flubaroo is a script which you can run within Google Spreadsheets which will grade student quizzes (Google Forms) for you simply and quickly. If you are new to creating quizzes with Google Forms you can check out this overview for instructions on how to get started. Once the quiz is setup in Google Forms, you can then have students complete the quiz which will generate a Google Spreadsheet with the results. This is where
Flubaroo comes into play. By running this script,
Flubaroo will grade all of the responses as well as compute the average for the class and each question, flag lowest scoring questions, create a grade distribution graph (Hello...data wall!), and gives you the option to e-mail each student their score with an answer key. Pretty impressive right? For more information, check out the demonstration video below:
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I have used Google Forms for many years to assess students in my computer class. I was using a formula that I created to grade the responses but
Flubaroo is much more refined. The script offers you many options that go beyond a simple grade. If you do not have access to computers in your classroom you can always have the students visit the lab, sign out the laptop cart, or allow them to access the assignment from home. This is a terrific time saver and can give you some great data in a very quick fashion.
Google Docs is a great web tool to create and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more. If you aren't already using Docs you probably are one of the people who are unsure unsure about whether or not you want to make the switch from Microsoft Office. Google has made it easy for you to try out Docs before you actually create an account. Check out Google Docs Demo for an opportunity to play around (collaboratively as well) before you create an account.
If you are a Google Docs user and want to learn something new don't forget that you can visit Google Docs on YouTube for some video tutorials. As a preview, I have embedded a video below on Google's new interface for 2011.
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I have introduced a lot of people to Google Docs over the past few years but some teachers want to play around before they get started. Google Docs Demo is a great way to accomplish this without having to create an account. What I really like about Google's apps is that there is a tremendous amount of support for users so you can always find help when it is needed.
