How can google forms help us in our practice as teachers? Google forms are not something that I have ever really used in my own classroom, but my school administrators use them frequently to get responses from both faculty, staff and students, so it is probably high time that I investigated them! Having read several articles now, they have given me many ideas that I would never have thought of, for using google forms in my classroom. There seem to be many useful add ons out there such as Flubaroo that can be used to create a detailed grading summary of student test results, or Goobric to create rubrics for grading student work, or the quick QR code generator to name but a few.
Since I have never used google forms before, I would like to start by making something simple and then use more add-ons as I become more confident with how they work. Initially I would like to use google forms to make a simple multiple choice test for my students about French adjectives. Initially we used Quizizz which gave questions with multiple choice answers, and I would like to transfer these multiple choice questions from this app to a google form for students to be tested upon. I will endeavor to use the app Flubaroo to grade this test – it will just be about 15-20 multiple choice questions. Google forms seem to open doors to many different possibilities – I currently have many rubrics for projects which have been typed up into a google doc, but I usually print them out and spend time writing comments as the projects are being presented. It would be great to do this electronically and then for students to get instant feedback. Currently I wait until all of the projects have been completed for before giving students the worksheet that I have filled out, and if students have been sick, this can take a while – google forms could certainly revolutionize this practice for me. In class we often organize impromptu events such as cheese-tastings or crêpes parties, all of which google forms could certainly streamline by getting students to sign up to bring in certain items and then the add-on formlimiter could be used to limit sign-ups to get the required number of items we need. For my capstone project I am considering studying how music can help with language acquisition. Recently my students have been learning songs and it has really helped with their pronunciation and they seem to remember some of the words when prompted by the music, so I would like to see if music does make a difference when learning language. Essentially, students will choose a song from a list that I give them and will make a poster representing their song using Adobe Spark. This poster will contain a vocabulary list of all of the key words that are important to the song, a gap-fill activity for the rest of the class or others around the campus to fill in while listening to the music, and a link to a karaoke video, also made by students. The QR code add-on could be used here so that once students have made a poster using Adobe Spark, listeners could use that code to take them either to a gap-fill activity to complete whilst listening to the original song, or to a karaoke version of the song that they could sing along too. My students will make a karaoke video with the words so that the listener will know when to sing along. Once this project is complete I intend to give my students a survey using google forms or survey monkey so that they can express their opinions as to whether they feel that music has helped them learn more words, improved their pronunciation or made them more engaged in their learning. I’m excited for this project - it will be fun to use new technology to try and enhance it – I’m hoping my students feel the same way too!
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Social media is becoming more and more prevalent in our everyday lives, so as educators we need to embrace it and become adept at using it. For myself, I see Twitter and possibly Instagram as being the main tools that would be used to communicate with colleagues, students and parents. I believe social media has many uses; just yesterday I joined a Twitter chat and was amazed at the amount of great tips and tools that I gained within the space of an hour. It was a total unknown to me, and I was quite nervous when the time came to join the chat, but it was so easy to use. I just typed in the hashtag #langchat and all the comments that fellow educators were making just popped up! It was so great to swap ideas with language teachers having similar classroom experiences. I definitely intend to try out some of their suggestions to see if it has any impact on my students’ learning. I am a little cautious, though, as I am not very familiar with all of my own school’s policies surrounding social media. One article I read suggested taking pictures of “students being awesome” in the classroom, but I am unsure if I am allowed to post pictures of my students on an Instagram account or on Twitter. This is something I would need to research. It is important too, to consider very carefully what you post online, since people can make judgements about you on just single comments that you make, especially if they don’t know you personally. Several articles suggested posting assignments and information about topics that have been covered in class on social media, which sounds a great idea. I already post assignments to Schoology, but it would be interesting to poll students and find out how many would benefit from them being posted on social media. Would they be more likely to do the assignments?
Social media can certainly be used in a variety of positive ways, and I think the key word surrounding all of this is “positive.” Celebrating student successes and sharing and swapping thoughts and ideas with students via planned online chats are all great ways to get students to feel more involved, included and motivated towards their studies. For example, once a week my Spanish 4 students go to Napa Valley Language Academy, where they help out in the classroom. Each week they write a diary describing the events of their hour spent there. I am wondering whether it might not be more to do an online chat once a week where students could contribute to the conversation. The only issues might be the time parameters, as many students have extra-curricular activities that they are involved in the evenings and after school. In today’s world, students I believe, need to be more educated on their usage of social media. It is far too easy to voice an opinion via a post in seconds, and then realize shortly afterwards that maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do. In times gone by, young people were under far less pressure as they didn’t have to worry about this aspect of their lives, as social media was not really available or accessible. Thoughts and opinions were kept to the locker room or behind closed doors, whereas today, making your thoughts public gives others the possibility of making false judgements about you, because they just happened to read one inappropriate posting you may have made on social media. Students I think want to be popular with their friends through postings they make, but are blissfully unaware of the consequences this may have. Schools, colleges and employers often check social media accounts to see what kind of information potential candidates are posting. If they don’t like the look of what they see, then it is very easy for them to pass over that person and move onto the next. If a student makes an inappropriate comment on social media, then their school needs to use that as a “teachable moment,” rather than a “punishable moment.” We need to educate our students. Teachers, counselors and administrators are all in a position to do that and should be empowered to do so. If I saw an inappropriate post by a student at my school, I would talk to the student’s counselor, teachers and administration so that they could help the student to see the error of their ways, and why it is so important to behave in a professional manner on social media. Behaving on social media as you would face to face with a person is key. Age is also another factor, in that no-one under 13 should be a social media account. So many things to think about, and so many possibilities out there. Exciting and scary at the same time! I am going to delve in slowly, but would certainly love to increase my use of social media with my students. |
AuthorI am a French & Spanish teacher at Justin-Siena High School wanting to get new ideas to motivate my students. ArchivesCategories |