The Google Forms Advantage

In previous years, I had students create with Google Docs or Slides or Drawings for various assignments in middle school English and Media classes. Then they would present their masterpieces by trudging up to my computer, logging in under a student Google Apps account, waiting for everything to load, and finally arriving at the point where the presentation was ready to go. By that time, the class had to be wrangled to silence again because of all the transition time. It was a bit of a headache.

An alternative would have been to have them share everything with my Google Apps account. However, I realized early on that they would always forget to uncheck the send email box, so I would have tons of emails. Also, with things like Google Sites and Maps, I found it very difficult to get rid of a student's project if they never "remembered" to unshare it with me.

Then came Google Classroom, a wonderful solution to the problem, but I realized it wasn't exactly the easiest way to get projects to me.

Finally...Hello Google Forms. When I saw a demonstration of this in my EdTechTeacher Chrome Book Workshop (thank you @AvraRachel !) this last summer as a way of gathering links to projects, I just about hit my head in realization.

Now, I simply create a Google Form for students to fill out their name(s) and their sharable link to their project. They all show up in one place - my Google Form (Responses) in my Google Drive. Now, when students have to present successively in my Media Class, I just give a quick click to their specific link, and they're ready to go, transition time wiped out. Look below for my procedure from our last assignment.

In your Google Drive, create a new form:

After naming your Form, I use just 2 required questions: name(s) and sharable link:

Once students fill out the form, I receive a spreadsheet of their responses in my drive and simply click on student links to view. If students are new to Google Apps, they will need some practice learning how to make their docs or slides or whatever sharable. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to open a link and can't view it because the share settings were not correct. Once they get it, though, it's a piece of cake.