Sheets, Forms, Slides!!

Google Drive is like Alice in Wonderland... you can travel further and further and further and get more and more overwhelmed at the power at your fingertips. My advice is master the basics and believe that the rest are pretty much built up from that foundation.

The basics are Google Docs (Word stripped of all the stuff you rarely use), Google Sheets (Excel stripped of all the stuff you don't understand) and Google Slides (PowerPoint stripped....). Google forms compliments Sheets by empowering you to make a form (easy BYOT implementation) to collect data that the form automatically organizes into a sheet (spreadsheet) for you to analyze or manipulate.

Lesson Example
The learning goal is to get students to understand why processed food has more ingredients than whole food items yet tends to cost less. This requires compiling data from a variety of sources (SCIENCE) that we can later analyze to draw warrants based on the evidence.

Google empowers the lesson by making it easy for students to choose a grocery store of their choice and use their Smartphone to input data they collect while visiting the store. They need no paper, pencil, backpack... All they need is access to the form and the critical thinking required to determine what observations to put in the cells.

Step ONE: Communicate the learning experience (Google Doc: example)
The screen shot from the example document has QR codes that students can scan with phones to open up the form OR the shortened URLs that the students can type into their browser to access the form.

Step TWO: Collect data and INPUT into the form (Google Form: set up example | final link view)
Students complete the form while on site and engaging in data collection. The compiling of data is done by google!!! So instruction and learning get to focus on WHAT the data says!

 This screen shot shows what the FORM looks like to the teacher as it is created in google forms.

*Notice you can "view live link"
*Notice you can "see number of responses"

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The screen shot below shows what the FORM looks like to the student on their smartphone.

*Notice questions are clean and simple
*Responses can be scales, check-boxes, pull down menus, etc...

Step THREE: Check out the data!
The form inputs all data collected by each individual student into one spreadsheet (digital collaboration). Within the "responses" sheet you can view each cell and sort through the data.

Google will also "summarize responses" and this is a pretty useful tool based on the type of data you required students to collect.

Below is a screen shot of the compiled sheet example:

A summary of responses from one of my questions to illustrate a possible quick chart produced in seconds and ready to discuss or consider.

Step FOUR: Communicate the experience (google slides)
Students will use google slides to formally communicate their experience and base their message on the data of the class. This slide presentation will be submitted through google classroom for me to easily review and assess from my iPad from home.

#GettinGoogle