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Weekly Tech Tips 24 October 2021

 Dear Friends,

Is it June yet? 

Weekly Tech Tips


Maybe a little late for your student and parent surveys this quarter, but here are some tips on using Google Forms. There is a big difference between SHARING a form and SENDING a form. When you SHARE a form you are inviting collaborators to work on editing the form with you or inviting them to make a copy of the form for their own use. When you SEND a form you are activating it in order to receive answers. The person you send it to cannot alter the form, they can only fill it out. To SHARE a form you can either copy the url out of the omni (address) bar and send that to your collaborator or you can click the More button ( the three vertical dots sometimes called the Snowman ) and Add collaborators

When someone shares a form with you you should make a copy, like this:


  1. In Google Forms, open the form or quiz you want to copy.

  2. In the top-right corner, click More (sometimes called the Snowman ) Make a copy.

  3. Name the copy.

  4. (Optional) To change the file location in Google Drive, click the folder and specify the new location.

  5. Click OK.

Now you have your own copy. Make the changes you want and then you are ready to SEND your form out to collect data. To SEND the form click SEND in the upper right hand corner just to the left of the Snowman. You will get a popup with several options on how to send your form; email, link, embedding, fb and twitter. At the bottom you still have the opportunity to add collaborators. 

Once you have a form set up the way you want it you can reuse it over and over. Also there is no need to send a different form with the exact same questions to different groups of people. If you need to sort your responses by which group the respondent belongs to, just add a question to your form that asks the respondent which group they belong to and you can sort the response after all the data has been collected. The recipients of the form will not see any difference in your form except the question asking them which of your classes they are in. When responses start rolling in, you can save them in a spreadsheet. Google automatically creates a few nice little charts and graphs, but if you want to sort and analyze the data you should save it in a spreadsheet like this:

Click up top on the Responses “tab” and click the green Sheets icon. You will be asked if you want to store your results in an existing spreadsheet or make a new one to hold the data. 

You could go either way here having a “master spreadsheet” that holds all of your related data or make a new one for each year / semester / quarter etc… If you choose the latter you can use the exact same form; you just have to unlink it from the old spreadsheet and then relink it to the new one. This time by clicking the Snowman next to the green Sheets icon.

Here is a video from Alice Keeler on how to do this step by step: 

https://youtu.be/_z1pD776NJ4?t=104 (first 1:44 is promo so I set the link to skip it)

I hope that helps and I am sorry I wasn’t prepared to send this out sooner, … but for next time.


This Week’s Apps and Resources


Here is a neat little new addition to the Google Calendar App. If you click on an event in your calendar the popup details box has a new option: Take Meeting Notes.

Clicking this creates a new doc that is prefilled with smart chips for the date, the event, and all the attendees as well as a bulleted notes list and a checkbox list for action items. This doc is now linked to the event and accessible when you click the event. It stores the new doc in the top level of you Drive. Purdy cool.


Articles


Want to get even more out of Google Calendar? Read this:

9 Google Calendar Features You Aren't Using But Should Be


Already feeling “June Tired”? Feeling stressed and pressed with heavy course loads, large class sizes and constant deadlines? I guess it could always be worse:

Teachers Face Attacks Alone

or

Replaced by AI (a common and a propos theme for a newsletter on educational technology wouldn’t you say)


Before I sign off this week I wanted to try to do something about the absence of PD this year. I know I have sent out many forms from this very spot over the last year and a quarter asking who is interested in what and when, but there were always hurdles like no time, can’t congregate, etc…


I will host an Open EdTech PD Sunday Nov 7, 2021 from 1:30 to 3:00 PM in the GSIS library (or alternatively room 304 if that is a problem). Google Workspace for Education is my area, but I am happy to try to help with whatever, just don’t bring me your broken macbook, I have no idea what to do with that 😝 . Please let me know if you are interested in that. Here would be a great place for a Google form, but you know what, I’ve had enough of those for now. Send me an email at this modified GSIS email address (did you know you can turn your 1 email address into infinite variations and then set up filters to sort them into a specific folder?)

wigentons+nopd2021@gsis.sc.kr and let me know what you’d like to know more about. If it helps and folks come, then I will endeavor to commit at least one Sunday a month to similar live PDs.


Don’t forget you can self study for the Google Certified Educator Program in our

New Google Workspace for Education GCE Google Classroom


You can discuss edtech, education or anything really in a Google Group outside of the GSIS domain here: GSIS2020


And you can read through the Weekly Tech Tip archives on this blog

Weekly Tech Tips



Have a great week,


Scott


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