Forms

Google Forms is an app used for gathering information and analyzing data.  It is a great tool for teachers, students, professionals and personal use as well.  Forms can collect any type of information electronically.  Once a person is given the form's unique URL, it can begin gathering information.  The link can be shared through social media, email or embedded in a website.  The data collected goes directly into a Google Spreadsheet.  There it can be analyzed, organized and viewed in chart or graph form.

The appearance of the form can be displayed in a range of varieties and styles.  From plain, to professional to fun for whatever the project requires.  It can also include seven different types of questions:  text, paragraph text, choose from a list, checkboxes, multiple choice, scale or grid.  The variety of options can support any type of questionaire.  Another option that I thought was unique is the ability to lead the questionee to a different set of questions based on a certain response.  In this way, you can get deeper information from each person individually in the same questionaire.  There is less need for follow-up.

These features give students and teachers a tool to help meet yet another Common Core standard.  According to the standards, students will "present information, findings and supporting evidence."  Using Google Forms they can actually gather information from peers, parents, and other community members then use that information to make decisions and form conclusions about a topic.

From a teaching perspective, the most impressive feature is the self-grading quiz.  Being able to give students a quiz through email or embedding it in a class website, has many advantages including motivating kids to want to take the quiz using technology.  But the best part is that it is self-grading.  Once the quiz is set up in Forms, and sent out to participants, it is converted to a spreadsheet.  The results are automatically fed into the spreadsheet where formulas can be entered to calculate the score of each quiz.  Additional information can be gathered from the quiz, like what the average score was and which questions were missed most often.  The results can also be viewed in graph form as well.

There are additional uses for teachers to gather information about students.  For example, tachers can create forms that will track specific students' grades, behavior, and assignments.  This information can then be emailed to the parents or shared with other teachers.  There is also a feature for advanced users called Google Apps Script that will automatically email a parent the information gathered by the teacher.  Everytime the form is submitted, the program will send the email automatically.  For students who need additional monitoring, this seems like a great option.

Below is the simple survey that I created:
  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlnlNpa7QhwrdEluZkVZVWcwY1JfRnBlX0pmY190dkE&usp=sharing