Category: Feedback

Use Google Form Templates for Exit Tickets & Course Evals

Over the past couple of days, I have spent some time looking at templates that Google has created for its products. More specifically, I came across some templates with Google Forms. Two of them that I feel could be very useful for teachers are the Exit Ticket and Course Evaluation templates. They are short sweet and to the point. I also like the fact that you have the ability to make any changes that you want with the templates by adding your own questions and/or deleting ones that you don’t find useful/important.

To see the template options, go to the Google Forms direct link forms.google.com. If you go the route of creating a new Google Form from your Google Drive account, you will not see the option to create a form from a template. But by hitting the back button, Google will bring you to their form’s homepage where you will see the available templates. The video below will quickly explain how to get to the Google Form templates.

When it comes to exit tickets, I know that there are tools out there that do the same thing, such as Socrative, but using the exit ticket template in Google Forms can be great for those instances that you

  • don’t want students to have to log into a different tool/system
  • don’t have a lot of time and want to quickly get the exit ticket to students through Google Classroom
As always, if you have any questions, you know where to find me.

Commenting in Google Docs – Notice the Change?

Google has made it easier for you to enter in a comment in a Google Document. I noticed that we actually received the update today in our school domain. Check it out in the gif below:

STEPS:
1. Highlight the text
2. Select the Comment button on the right side of the Google Document
3. Type in your comment
It is that easy.

Polling Students through Google Slides

Receiving formative feedback can be very helpful. There are many tools out there that help get that feedback, whether you use Kahoot!, Quizizz, Socrative, or Peardeck (to name a few).

Just recently, Poll Everywhere came out with a Chrome extension that allows Google Slide users the ability to embed Poll Everywhere questions right in a presentation.

I can see this being very useful when you know you want to ask your students a very quick question but don’t want to spend the time to add the presentation in a Peardeck or Kahoot! Poll Everywhere does have a free educator account (which is great) but only limits you to 40 responses per question. So, those of you who have class sizes higher than that would not be able to use this tool.

So the next time you have that moment of ‘I want to quickly add a question or two to a google slide presentation’ give Poll Everywhere a try.

STEP 1:
Get the Poll Everywhere Chrome extension. The actual official title of this Chrome extension is: Polling in Google Slides (This chrome extension has already been pushed to the staff in my district).

It is important to note that you will not ‘see’ the chrome extension with the rest of the extensions in the Chrome browser. Instead, a new menu option will show up when you have a Google Slide opened on your screen.

STEP 2:
Go to Poll Everywhere and sign up for the free K-12 Educational Plan. Click HERE for the direct link.

STEP 3:
Open up a Google Slide presentation that you would like to include a question or two in your presentation. You will notice the new menu option: Poll Everywhere.

STEP 4:
Log in to your Poll Everywhere account.

STEP 5:
Then select Create Poll. A pop up window will appear for you to choose the type of question. Once you hit insert poll, it will automatically insert a slide with that poll question on it.

Important to Note: The actual poll question will not show until you are in present mode of your slide presentation. While in editing mode, you will see the following:

If you have any questions on how you can use this extension or you need assistance making this work for you, just let me know.

Customize Your Feedback in Google Docs

Earlier this year, I provided a blog post on how you can create shortcuts in Google Documents so that you are not wasting time when providing valuable feedback to your students. To read this previous post, click HERE.

Last week, Mr. Geddes, came to Kerri Lunn and I asking how he can mimic a way of providing feedback he has done in the past by hand. He wanted a way to provide a check mark, like he would have with his pen as a means of agreeing with the statement the student shared. At first, we did not think it was possible until we looked further.

This is what we came up with:

STEP 1:
Find a check and an x that you will want to use to insert in a Google Document. To do this, open up a blank Google Document. Then choose Special Characters – found under the Insert Menu.

STEP 2:
Use the draw symbol box on the right hand side to find what you are looking for. You will notice that we drew in a check mark. Then, choose the green check mark so that it can be seen easily in a student’s paper. By selecting it, it will be inserted on your blank Google Document.

We did the same thing for finding an x to use.

STEP 3:
Copy the inserted check mark on your blank Google Document so that the shortcut can be created. To do this, click Preferences under the Tools menu.

We had Mr. Geddes type gpp (representing good point). This means anytime he types the letters gpp when providing feedback, Google will automatically replace it with a green check mark. You might be asking, why gpp? We did this so that incase Mr. Geddes would ever type the letters gp together it would not produce a check mark. By adding gpp, we have eliminated possibilities of those letters ever being together.
Once you type gpp in the replace box, paste the green check mark you copied from the blank Google document. Then hit the OK button. 

STEP 4:
Repeat step 3 for the red check mark. This time, we had Mr. Geddes use wpp as the shortcut for the red x to appear.

STEP 5:
Open up a paper that you need to provide feedback on and use the shortcuts that you have created.

Note: Once you create a shortcut, they will always be available to you.

This solution may not solve all situations you might be used to/faced with when grading physical papers but at least this shows you possibilities that are available with assessing in Google Documents.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask – you know where to find me. As I have already tweeted out, we thank Mr. Geddes for pushing us. It is all about learning!