GAIN, 5-17-2015

I have never used Google Forms before. The spreadsheets aspect has always been my turn off to it. Also, I like the idea of grading manually so I can comment and such on it myself. But after trying Forms, I started to warm up to it a bit. I found it kind of confusing though with all the formulas, but I'm not a spreadsheet person so this wasn't surprising. I do enjoy the thought of self-grading quizzes though and it's neat to see that Google now has this technology. Creating the test itself was very simple and I had no difficulties with that. Where it got tricky was creating the formulas for grading. I watched all the AtomicLearning videos several times and read the blog links that were posting but I was still having trouble. So I watched this one video that introduced a program called Flubaroo that self-grades. I really enjoy this program! I love mostly how it self grades, but also highlights the most missed questions automatically so a teacher can see the questions students are having the most trouble with. Now that I discovered that program, I will more than likely use this program in the classroom.

Click here to take the quiz

Click here to see the Spreadsheet

As Graham pointed out, there are many advantages to using forms. Administrators can use it to create questionnaires and surveys that can be posted on the school's Facebook or Twitter page. Teachers can use it to easily grade assignments (because on pg. 115, Graham says that educators are bombarded with collecting data representing student performance). Grades can also be compared across assignments this way, and administrators can access them at any time because they are on the cloud. It also fulfills two CCS for Presentations by making strategic use of digital media to express information and presenting information in an organized line of reasoning that are appropriate to the audience. It also fulfills a standard for Writing because a student must conduct a small research project and create a way to maintain and synthesize his data while improving his writing skills (The aforementioned skills are on page 117). I believe Graham uses Forms too much as a data organizing tool than as a quiz/survey creator. While it can definitely serve as both, the primary app for data is Google Sheets. He mentions the use of keeping the students' contact info on it, but why would you do that in Google Forms instead of Google Sheets. Maybe my simple mind cannot comprehend such things.