Pop quiz

Posted by: Garnet Gratton

Garnet Gratton is an educator with experience teaching university-level literature and writing courses. She has also taught high school, 9th through 12th grades, in both public and private settings. Now, she teaches and consults other educators through her @edu blog, which is where we first encountered her story.

Ever since I discovered Google Docs' forms, I must confess that I’m obsessed. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about all I can do with forms: grading and testing and quizzing and polls and information collection and books-read-this-month and surveys and sign-ups. . . . It goes on and on until I fear my head may split.

To put an end to the madness, I picked one option, put fingertips to keyboard and came up with a simple quiz on rhetoric:

You can send this quiz to each of your students through email, but it's even easier to make it public, and link to it from your website. Have them enter responses from the computer lab, or assign it for homework. Google docs timestamps students' entries, so you'll know if they beat your deadline, and their responses are collected into a Google docs spreadsheet, which you can check at any time.

One of the great things about this system is that you as the teacher have the option to keep the spreadsheet private, or make it public, allowing students to compare their answers with others. I call this particular quiz a "feeler quiz," in which I can sort of feel out whether students understand the information from a previous lesson, or if the material needs a further going over. Hmmmm. In this case, I think it's the latter!

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A little presentation gives a lot of information

Posted by: Meredith Whittaker, Program Manager

Idling online the other day, I came across a presentation on the Piraeus Lion, created and posted on P-E Fronning's Martin Klasch blog.

The topic is interesting, but I was particularly impressed with the way that P-E used the embedded presentation to communicate a large amount of content in short and manageable pieces.

Says P-E, "I've been familiar with the Piraeus Lion, and its history, for awhile. After reading a Wikipedia article on the subject, I thought it might be interesting to others. A fellow blogger wrote something about Google Docs, which seemed to be a great way to communicate this content, so that's what I did."

Check it out here to learn a little about Greek sculpture, the spoils of war, runic graffiti and the versatility of embedded presentations.

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Aliza's chronicles, part 4: collaboration, quick and easy

Posted by: Aliza Sherman, author, speaker, TV and radio producer

In my last post, I talked about using Google Docs for long-term collaboration. But what about quick collaboration for one or two documents? Keeping track of them is not the issue, but I've found plenty of reasons to use Docs for quick collaboration.

Recently, someone asked me to review a press release for their nonprofit organization. Since I like to do pro-bono work for good causes, I was happy to do it and simply uploaded it to Docs, made my edits, then pointed her to it. Voila! Done.

Also in the last few weeks, I started working on a rough Table of Contents to land a new book deal and have asked another writer to co-author the book with me. With me in Alaska and her on the East Coast, I knew that email and the occasional phone call would be all we’d need. But I was wrong. We needed Docs.

We each took a stab at the TOC, then I uploaded both versions and used one of the versions as the foundation for the collaborative draft. Then I discovered another feature.

When I went to save the document so I could email it to my book agent, I remembered the "attach the document as a PDF" feature, so I sent it to her directly from Docs. That particular book project my agent was pitching me and my writer friend for did not pan out. But, we realized we'd make a great team as we worked together on Google Docs. We are now in the process of collaborating on a new book proposal -- so what started out as a quick collaboration may soon become long-term.

Next time, I'll discuss how Google Docs can enhance one's...guilty pleasures.

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The Do's and Don't's for using Forms

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager

We've heard plenty of great stories about how people are using the Forms feature of Google Docs and how it has really helped them collect information from friends, family, customers, employees and website or blog visitors. But (there's always a "but"), we've also heard some stories about how people have been confused when trying to re-arrange questions or otherwise change the spreadsheet underlying the form. Yes, we're actively fixing these issues, but in the mean time, here's a guide to getting along with the existing quirks of the current forms feature... Let us know if we've missed something by getting involved in the discussion on the Google Docs Help Group, where we've re-posted this information.

First - the basics: Yes, there is always a spreadsheet underlying a form... If you started with the spreadsheet, you knew that from the start, but if you started with the form (like clicking the "Create your own form" link on someone else's form confirmation), you discovered the spreadsheet part later (we hope!). Once your form is set up, form submissions get added to the spreadsheet at the bottom of your data - after the last row which has data already.

Second - the main source of confusion (and our fault): Generally, if you want to change the form, don't try to do it by changing the spreadsheet.... just edit the form. The form controls the spreadsheet more than vice versa.

Here are the detailed Do's and Don'ts to clarify how to edit forms:

	DO	DON'T
From the FORM	re-arrange questions using the up/down icons on the left of the question being edited delete questions you want removed from the form. Note: the spreadsheet column will NOT be deleted, so you won't lose any prior responses, but it will no longer be filled with any new data.
	DO	DON'T
From the SPREADSHEET	insert columns for your own data - calculations, notes, etc - which are not in the form insert rows under your column headers to create calculations of results (such as counts of each answer, etc. New form responses will always be added after the last row with any content.	DON'T try to re-arrange questions by cutting/pasting portions of columns OR whole columns DON'T delete columns that are in the form - they will not be deleted from the form and will eventually re-appear in the spreadsheet (next time you edit the form) as the first available column at the end of your current columns. DON'T change column header text, as the next edit of the form will overwrite those back to whatever they are on the form... make all changes to question titles on the form and those will be transferred to the spreadsheet column headers (overwriting what's there). DON'T expect re-ordering of questions in the form to change the order of columns in the spreadsheet

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Featured video: quick and easy forms

Posted by: Meredith Whittaker, Program Manager

From one of your fellow Docs users, here's a well-made and thorough video covering every part of creating a spreadsheets form. The step-by-step instructions are a good way to get started making forms, and they also inform anyone who wants to help others in creating and distributing a form -- but doesn't want to provide tech support while the others figure it out :)

Note that while this video refers to creating a contact form, you can, of course, create surveys, questionnaires, order sheets, and many other cool things using the forms feature, and following these steps.

So, sit back and enjoy this great resource (and thank Lynnette for creating it!).



Check out more great Google Docs videos, created by lots of you, on the Google Docs Community channel.

Have a Docs-related video you'd like to submit to the Community Channel? Let us know.

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Aliza's chronicles, part 3: collaboration and the long haul

Posted by: Aliza Sherman, author, speaker, TV and radio producer

Last time I discussed how Google Docs helped me as I migrated documents from my old computer to my shiny new one. This time I'll talk about using Google Docs for long-term collaboration.

As I prepared the manuscripts for my upcoming podcast, I started sharing them with my producer on Basecamp. She obliged me and checked them out, but commented that the “writeboard” or whiteboard collaboration feature wasn’t up to snuff because it required its own markup language.

“Try Google Docs,” she said. (She had found Docs and was a convert.) She uploaded my first manuscript. I was frustrated because I was hoping to see her previous revisions once I made my changes to the script.

“Look at the Revision History,” she said.

Revision history? I didn’t know Docs had a revision history feature! I swear a choir of angels sang and trumpets trumpeted in my head with that discovery. I'm looking for a long and fruitful relationship with my podcast producer and am grateful she told me about a new feature in Docs.

As I'm sure you know, when you're collaborating, a revision history is really critical. And of course it makes sense that the feature for looking back at previous revisions would be in Docs. I am, of course, a feature-phobe, which means:

• I'm terrified to try something that I don't need yet. I use just what I need when I use it.
• Did I mention that I hate to read instructions of any kind?
• But, each time I discover a useful new feature, it is like Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa and all the other sparkly holidays in one.

Another example of how I'm using Google Docs for long-term collaboration: Every month I send press releases for a client's workshops. To properly format the releases, I refer to a list of workshop descriptions, a list of locations, and a list of media contacts. Now instead of searching for these documents on my computer, I can quickly access Google Docs and copy and paste the content that I need.

Occasionally one or more of those documents needs updating, something that's easy to do in Docs. Then the next time I access the files, I always know that the most recent copy is at my fingertips. The collaboration comes in handy when my client wants to update the document. I have a number of ways of getting the most recent version I have to her for her edits including giving her access to my documents in Docs, emailing her a PDF for her to print and markup (yes, people still do that), and downloading to my computer and attaching to an email to her.

I love these options and so do my clients and collaborators.

Extra Tip: Make sure to name your files clearly so you always know what they contain without even having to open it.

In my next post, I'll discuss quick collaborations in Google Docs.

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Simply scientific

Posted by: Stephen Rahn, Information Technology Specialist at Kennesaw State University, currently teaching and working on a Ph.D in Instructional Technology

We've been using Google Docs for some time. The fact that it's free helps our rural school district save money that would otherwise be spent on more expensive productivity suites. We've found, especially, that the sharing capabilities have helped facilitate research and collaboration in our school's science classes.

Currently, our students are using Google Spreadsheets to enter data collected from water samples from a nearby stream, measuring the pH level in the water and also looking at different types of chemicals present. They then use Google Documents to chart the data they find, and share it with each other. This keeps them all on track, and means that they can learn from each other and draw on a much larger pool of data than if they were simply keeping notebooks, not shared until the project's end, if ever.

We love Stephen's brief account of using Docs to facilitate science learning, and it got us wondering, who else is using Google Docs for science? Are you? Ornithologists, paleontologists, astronomers and armchair biochemists...we want to know how using Google Docs has helped your scientific pursuits.

Write us a note and let us know what you're up to, or submit a video, showing us how you use Google Docs for your science projects.

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