Forms for Art Teachers

In my last post I talked about all the amazing things that forms can do for everyone, but I started thinking about how can I use this for my classroom. I started wondering how would using some of these new techs look in the art room? Ultimately, what I found was that I what I have constructed is making my life as an art teacher so much easier. I am going to admit that I am little obsessed with Add-ons right now and specifically Autocrat.

1. Supply List

One of my biggest struggles is ordering supplies. While I love getting supplies in. I hate making that yearly supply list. I dread having to do this. I dread it so much that I actually put it off until I'm desperate for the items. The worst part is that I will make list after list of items and then lose those lists. Then I find that I've forgotten to order the blue watercolor paint. So I created a form to help me with this exact problem. It is a pretty simple form, I put in which item I need, the item number, and the quantity needed. Since I have my phone often nearby I put the link on it so I can fill it out, right away. I can then use EZQuery to sort the information. 

After trying this for a few weeks, I am realizing that finding the item number while putting away stuff is a huge pain in the butt. I have found I skip that question and have continued using the item and quantity needed. 

2. Project Organization

Each year I try to organize all my art projects, lesson plans, presentations, etc, etc. Unfortunately, I have things scattered between handwritten notes, photos on my phone, links on Pintrest page, and everywhere in between. I have tried linking them together. I've tried linking my presentations with my documents, but that has never actually come together. Plus, that takes so long. This year, I created a google form. In my form, I choose, grade level, semester, skills assessed, target goals, resources, and then my final reflection. As I type this, I am thinking about adding in Common Core Standards. This form is linked to my ipad/desktop, so that as soon as I finish a project I can fill out the form and add it to my digital portfolio and I print a copy for my binder.

Not only did I create a form but I also linked the Form spreadsheet using Autocrat and it now auto-fills a document for me. Basically, Autocrat creates my lesson plan. Which is spectacular because in my district we have to provide a lesson plan and a reflection to our administrator for our observations.With this one form, I have actually completed my requirement for planning and reflection.

3. Student Reflections

Finally, I recreated my student reflection and turn that into a form / auto-filled handout. Right now, the lack of printers in my school makes it hard for us to print out the final reflection. I love the idea but getting the reflections too my student's hands seems more difficult. While Autocrat will send me these forms, having to print all 350 is tedious and just silly. I want the students to have them and look at them. I think that in the future, when I move more into Google Classroom I will link this and have the students fill it out that way.

Amazing Things You can do with Google Forms

     Did you know that you can do all kinds of crazy things using Google Forms?! I mean, awesome things, like teacher appreciation, parent contact, and yes the dreaded discipline? YOU CAN!  I'd like to think I knew all these things but honestly it's one of those things that I'm not sure if I knew it or if I just didn't have the creativity to think up such awesome ideas.

    On November 3rd I had honor of being asked to present at the Mercy High School Tech Talk #MHTT17. While my presentation was great, I was more blown away by the other presentations. While it was a small conference it was effective and impressive. Just what I needed for those just before Thanksgiving Blues. You know those over worked blues, where you force yourself to think about a thing to be thankful for everyday of the month of November to just forget how overworked and out of control your school life is. Yeah, this was perfect. Their keynote speaker, Brent Coley, was brilliant. His stories propelled you into a space of laughter and sometimes tears (or that almost tears moment). To sit and remember in a funny yet thought provoking way that we have the influence to be eduawesome is just what I needed. I needed to be reminded I have the power to change a student's perspective but simultaneously I'm not the only teacher who is terrified about becoming THAT teacher. You know the one who is set in their ways. The one who will criticize every student and teacher, if their behavior doesn't fit the 1952 protocol for education.

    Well, what does this have to do with teaching Google Forms? It was during this conference and in the session Taking Google Forms to the Next Level with Brent Coley that I learned how awesome it is to use Google Forms. I was so excited I had to share it with someone and since most of my building is headed out on the Washington DC trip, I returned to my blog. I highly suggest watching the tutorials on how to create these amazing Google Forms at BrentColey.com

    The thing that I have loved about Google Forms, since the beginning of Google Forms; is it will take the data from a survey and populate it into a Google spreadsheet. Let me repeat, it will take the data from a survey and populate it into a Google spreadsheet - this spread sheet then can be sorted for deeper investigation and can also be shared with others. I used to sort everything using the pull down tabs in Google Forms but I found out that a better ways is to use the google chrome add on EZ Query, you can easily and quickly sort your spreadsheet from its original format into other pages based on specific criteria.  Here you can see that I have created other pages at the bottom of my Spreadsheet labeled 8th grade, 7th grade and 6th grade. All I had to do was use the EZ Query add on, then select what I want to include in my query and how I wanted it sorted. POOF! After a minute or two, depending on my connection speed, it populated the new sheet and now I can easily find my students via grade and name. Again I suggest watching the tutorial. It is much easier to watch than to explain via text.

What blew my mind was the teacher feedback and teacher appreciation forms Brent Coley used in his presentation. Both of these forms provided positive, immediate feedback to teachers, the teacher feedback form was for informal walk through, a non-evaluative way for Coley to acknowledge the good work that he was seeing in his teachers classroom, he stated "if I need to leave non-positive feedback about a walk through, I'm not sending that through an email." The teacher appreciation form was created to send positive vibes to the entire staff at Coley's elementary from the students and parents and probably some teachers throughout his school. Both forms then used autocrat to send an automatic receipt. In the teacher feedback example the receipt was sent to the teacher being observed and to Coley himself. He stated that a copy of the receipt was then saved in a google file as well. For the teacher appreciation a copy was sent to the sender and to the teacher. Coley also stated other places that he would use autocrat, Student Discipline, here the feedback would be sent to teacher, the administrator, parent if needed, and then the counselor. All of these can be easily plugged into the program beforehand and will auto generate based on the questions asked in the survey. I am totally stealing these from him and creating my own versions for my school. Here's a mock up example I have created for walk through observations.

These are just a few examples of the amazing places that forms could be used. At my school we have used forms for Student of the Month but it fell flat because finding the google doc, copying the information was not that exciting or easy to do. However, with the addition of autocrat we could easily create a "receipt" or award/certificate for the students that states exactly what was announced about their student of the month nomination.  Plus it will auto-send the information right to my counselors and anyone who wants it. Here is one that I made for my counselors for the student of the month.

Good luck creating your own awesome forms and check out Brent Coley's website for some other amazing form ideas!