One of the challenges of rolling out Google Docs for all students at our school is in managing all those docs students are turning in. Teachers are experiencing the frustration of cluttered In Boxes taken over by individual messages from students sharing their assignments. Fortunately, I have found an awesome idea from John Miller @162 that utilizes a Google Form as an Assignment Tracker. The idea is innovative, efficient and simple. Here’s how John’s invention works:
Teachers create a very simple Google Form to be submitted by students every time they turn in work. Information on the form should include name, class period, assignment name and a link to the Google Doc with the assignment. The information submitted by students automatically populates a spreadsheet to be used by teachers to keep track of assignments and also to launch those assignment for grading and review.
Benefits:
- Teachers only have to create one form to used for the entire year. At certain intervals, teachers can simply copy and paste the information into a new page on the same spreadsheet for the purposes of record keeping, then work from a clean sheet.
- Use of an assignment tracker requires virtually no work for teachers. The additional effort necessary for the assignment tracker to work is a very quick task that is completed by students, but the task in itself is easy and it should actually make them feel good when they turn in work. The task is similar to crossing items off of a To Do list and we all know that just feels good.
- When students submit the form, a time stamp accompanies it, so teachers can see when an assignment was turned in. This means there is no need to be diligent about checking the form on that date an assignment is due. There is a digital record.
- Since the information is in a Google Spreadsheet, it can be sorted or even exported to Excel and used as a database for generating form letters for missing assignments.
Samples:
Click the images to view the actual student form and teacher spreadsheet.
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