I really enjoyed using technology while creating an interest inventory. I had never used GoogleForms before, and after playing with it for a few hours and previewing my survey, I am really happy with how GoogleForms works. I can definitely see myself using this in my classroom in the future. I discovered there's an option where you can make the GoogleForm a quiz. This could be great for "take-home" quizzes or for technology advanced classrooms in today's schools. I included a picture of my favorite character from a movie to break up the interest inventory and make it feel less intrusive. I am a fan of including pictures and videos to make the survey more aesthetically pleasing and less boring to a high school student. I also really liked how I could break up the format of the survey. Some questions could have multiple choice answers, short answers, long answers, or checkboxes. I believe that this will relieve redundancy.
Creating an interest inventory was also a great learning experience. Rather than constructing questions that made me know just the general interests of my students, I enjoyed asking myself WHY each question was beneficial to ask as an educator and shape my questions based on what I would like to know and become familiar with regarding my students. Technology has a lot to contribute to the creation of surveys, and GoogleForms is definitely a winner in my book!
Oh my gosh, that was so much harder than I thought it was going to be. I am with Eva--I really liked using google forms, this was my first go at google forms. This exercise made me feel like such a novice, though..I realize I don't even know what I should WANT to know from my students. I know that will change, but it's definitely humbling. When I was at EdCamp earlier this month, a lot of teachers talked about a website called GoFormative...I'd like to look into that for these kinds of forms as well. I understand, however, that google forms are an effective tool for gathering information like this.
I very much like the idea of working backward to create the questions in order to elicit responses that will be useful. It would be helpful if I had a better grasp of the kind of information that I'll really find important! The other key to a successful interest inventory, I think, are questions that are fun, maybe even a little our of the ordinary, that will keep the students engaged and answering honestly! :)
I am so glad that you assigned this to us. I have never used technology to create a quiz like this before. I use the google platform to complete surveys through the Sherlock Center for work, but never made one myself. I am very impressed by the ease of use. I love how interactive the platform is and how easy it is to switch between different formats. With more and more students receiving chromebooks and using technology in the classroom, this is definitely a tool educators can take advantage of. Also in a educational world where teachers number one complaint is the burden of clerical work and repetitive paper work. The ease of grading and organization of students completed work when using this platform is definitely a plus. It’s not that i believe we should allow for technology to take over education but i do believe using tools like this have a place in the balance.
Designing an interest inventory in GoogleForms was not any harder than designing one in Microsoft Word. If anything, it was slightly easier. In Word, I would have had to play around with the margins and spacing to figure out how much room to leave for student responses and how to make the questionnaire look correct. With Forms, everything was already formatted and students have the option to fill out an answer with as little or as much information as possible. While playing around with the options in Forms, I had some trouble deciding whether or not I wanted the question's answer to be required. On one hand, I obviously want the students to answer the questions I chose. Each one was picked to elicit some sort of desired response so I could get to know the student better (I hope). On the other hand, I also did not want to force the student to open up to me if they were not ready. Relationships do not seem to occur instantly on day one so ultimately I decided to not make the responses required with the goal that throughout the school year, I would learn about the student when they choose to open up to me. Overall, I don't mind using Google(Insert Software Here) over Microsoft(Insert Software Here). If students are more apt to use Google for assignments and it creates less paperwork for me to lose, then I'm all for it!
I enjoyed creating an interest inventory using technology. I found it easier to organize my thoughts. I would like to use this type of technology in the classroom one day. I believe it would be a much easier way to gain information about students than handing them a paper and pen. I feel like filling out a form on a computer would allow a student to feel more comfortable because it's a private way of providing information. As far as the questions themselves go, some were a bit difficult to create. I didn't want to ask anything too personal but also learn as much about the student as possible. I plan on using some of these questions on the first day of class one day!
Hey all. I just turned in my interest inventory. I had fun doing it. I really liked the process of creating the questionnaire because I had to start with the end result and work backward, which I think Professor Horwitz referred to as Understand By Design. I had to think, hmmm what do I want to know or unlock about my students? Then I had to think real hard about what kind of question or what subject matter I should use and how to form my question. Very engaging process and lots of fun. I just used Word to create it because I envisioned my students filling this out by hand and writing all over it. I will definitely use this when I become a real teacher!
I really enjoyed doing this assignment. I agree with Sarah and Frankie about the difficulty of coming up with questions. I didn't realize how hard it would be to come up with questions I found meaningful enough to ask students, as well as questions related to my content area. I definitely had to work backwards and think about the responses I wanted to receive before putting the question into words. I also used Google Forms to create my interest inventory. This was my first time creating one myself rather than submitting my work on it. It was super easy to use and fun to play around with. I can definitely see myself using it in the future. I think it's really important to use different aspects of technology whenever possible to help students become more engaged and interested in assignments and participation in class. I made all of my questions required so I would get responses from all my students on all the questions.
I thought that developing questions was the hardest part of this assignment. As far as the technology goes, Google Forms was extremely user friendly, especially considering this was my first time using it. Being able to toy with the color scheme, as well as being able to add pictures, made it easy to customize it in a way that I believe might engage students. I considered other programs, such as PowerPoint and Word, but in the end Google Forms provided the opportunity to directly collect responses without any additional steps. I could definitely see myself using this in the future, especially if I can use Excel the way Professor Horwitz does to organize everything with timestamps, names, and links. In many ways, I despise what technology is doing to our society, and for that reason I have my apprehensions about how it should be used in schools. That being said, having this kind of technology at our disposal does a lot of the busy work for us. Having tech that can organize to this extent will hopefully allow us to place our energy into other important areas in the future.
I really enjoyed doing my interest inventory over google forms. I feel like this will be a great resource for when I am a teacher. It is easy to use and provides a lot of great options for quizzes and surveys. I particularly liked how you could choose a variety of different types of questions. Having the option of multiple choice, check mark, long answer and short answer responses, made it easy to create the format of the interest inventory that I wanted. I was able to make some of my questions multiple choice, while others, students have to write in their response. Another great feature is having the option to make a response required. This ensures that students have to answer every question before they can turn it in. Having the option to add photos to Google Form made the interest inventory more personal and less invasive. I feel that adding photos makes students more likely to answer the questions accurately. For example, under the question, what do you like to do outside of school? I added a picture of of some art supplies. This shows students one of my interests, and may make them feel less like a nosey teacher is prying in their lives. This was a great way to become familiar with google forms and I am looking forward to using it in the future. If anyone hasn’t gotten the chance to create a quiz or survey on this site I highly suggest you check it out!
Anyone want to share their inventories when this is over? I'm very interested to see how the data looks after students actually TAKE the survey--maybe we can chat about it in class tomorrow!
I really enjoyed using Google Forms to make this interest inventory. I had never used it before and was really nervous about using it but it was so simple and easy to use. I agree that the hardest part was definitely coming up with questions that would give me the answer that I wanted, and figuring out what I wanted to know in the first place and why. I'm really glad that this is something I know how to do now because I feel like this type of technology is only going to have a bigger and bigger part in education as we move into the future.
This was a fun activity. It was one of those activities that made me feel like and transform into an actual teacher as opposed to a student aspiring to be a teacher. I thought using technology to create the interest inventory was great and worked out very well. I felt like I had more time to be creative and was able to spend more time editing and thinking about the details than if I were to do it simply by hand or in a more traditional way. Using technology gave me many options to liven up my inventory questionnaire. I was able to easily and strategically place art clips in the questionnaire that brought life to the document and also hopefully inspired the students who take it to liberally answer the questions. Before I started the assignment I was gauging the time to be much longer than it actually took me and this was undoubtedly due to technology reasons. On a side note, even though we had a thorough lead-in to this assignment in class last week I still found it a bit difficult to craft my questions in a way that tried to take into account the many different intricacies that I could potentially encounter in my students. But by actually partaking in an assignment like this definitely helped me with my thought process. And just like anything, practice makes better.
I really enjoyed venturing into and exploring google forms! I had never used this before and after creating my interest inventory I can't wait to utilize this tool in the future. As most of my classmates have expressed, the questions were difficult to generate. Pinpointing exactly what I need to know about my students and how this information can help me in creating lessons etc... is easier said than done. Regardless, this was a great intro into the world of google docs.
I enjoyed trying to get myself into the mindset of 'what would benefit me to know as a teacher?' That question was a lot more difficult to answer than I thought it would be. Since I am going for secondary ed. math, at first I tried to make it subject specific. For example, what would I want pre-calculus students to know before starting versus what would I like geometry students to know before starting the year? Then I tried to make it more general for all classes and reminded myself that the most important thing was really to get to know my students. I tried to make the questions general but left room for them to really give me detail about how they felt about math. The questions vary from personal interests to background in math to really try and get a whole view of the student. I found it very difficult to try and make the questions applicable to all different backgrounds. And I also struggled with what format it should be in and how to really reach all different kinds of learners. Overall, I think what I came up with would be a great start to help me know my students but also give me enough insight to maybe ask them more questions after reviewing what their answers were. I feel trial and error would really help me to modify this questionnaire to be just specific enough to give me a good idea of who my students really are.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed using technology while creating an interest inventory. I had never used GoogleForms before, and after playing with it for a few hours and previewing my survey, I am really happy with how GoogleForms works. I can definitely see myself using this in my classroom in the future. I discovered there's an option where you can make the GoogleForm a quiz. This could be great for "take-home" quizzes or for technology advanced classrooms in today's schools. I included a picture of my favorite character from a movie to break up the interest inventory and make it feel less intrusive. I am a fan of including pictures and videos to make the survey more aesthetically pleasing and less boring to a high school student. I also really liked how I could break up the format of the survey. Some questions could have multiple choice answers, short answers, long answers, or checkboxes. I believe that this will relieve redundancy.
ReplyDeleteCreating an interest inventory was also a great learning experience. Rather than constructing questions that made me know just the general interests of my students, I enjoyed asking myself WHY each question was beneficial to ask as an educator and shape my questions based on what I would like to know and become familiar with regarding my students. Technology has a lot to contribute to the creation of surveys, and GoogleForms is definitely a winner in my book!
Oh my gosh, that was so much harder than I thought it was going to be. I am with Eva--I really liked using google forms, this was my first go at google forms. This exercise made me feel like such a novice, though..I realize I don't even know what I should WANT to know from my students. I know that will change, but it's definitely humbling. When I was at EdCamp earlier this month, a lot of teachers talked about a website called GoFormative...I'd like to look into that for these kinds of forms as well. I understand, however, that google forms are an effective tool for gathering information like this.
ReplyDeleteI very much like the idea of working backward to create the questions in order to elicit responses that will be useful. It would be helpful if I had a better grasp of the kind of information that I'll really find important! The other key to a successful interest inventory, I think, are questions that are fun, maybe even a little our of the ordinary, that will keep the students engaged and answering honestly! :)
jeez. I wish I could get back in and edit that post! I hate seeing grammatical errors! Sorry everyone! :)
DeleteI am so glad that you assigned this to us. I have never used technology to create a quiz like this before. I use the google platform to complete surveys through the Sherlock Center for work, but never made one myself. I am very impressed by the ease of use. I love how interactive the platform is and how easy it is to switch between different formats. With more and more students receiving chromebooks and using technology in the classroom, this is definitely a tool educators can take advantage of.
ReplyDeleteAlso in a educational world where teachers number one complaint is the burden of clerical work and repetitive paper work. The ease of grading and organization of students completed work when using this platform is definitely a plus. It’s not that i believe we should allow for technology to take over education but i do believe using tools like this have a place in the balance.
Designing an interest inventory in GoogleForms was not any harder than designing one in Microsoft Word. If anything, it was slightly easier. In Word, I would have had to play around with the margins and spacing to figure out how much room to leave for student responses and how to make the questionnaire look correct. With Forms, everything was already formatted and students have the option to fill out an answer with as little or as much information as possible.
ReplyDeleteWhile playing around with the options in Forms, I had some trouble deciding whether or not I wanted the question's answer to be required. On one hand, I obviously want the students to answer the questions I chose. Each one was picked to elicit some sort of desired response so I could get to know the student better (I hope). On the other hand, I also did not want to force the student to open up to me if they were not ready. Relationships do not seem to occur instantly on day one so ultimately I decided to not make the responses required with the goal that throughout the school year, I would learn about the student when they choose to open up to me.
Overall, I don't mind using Google(Insert Software Here) over Microsoft(Insert Software Here). If students are more apt to use Google for assignments and it creates less paperwork for me to lose, then I'm all for it!
I enjoyed creating an interest inventory using technology. I found it easier to organize my thoughts. I would like to use this type of technology in the classroom one day. I believe it would be a much easier way to gain information about students than handing them a paper and pen. I feel like filling out a form on a computer would allow a student to feel more comfortable because it's a private way of providing information. As far as the questions themselves go, some were a bit difficult to create. I didn't want to ask anything too personal but also learn as much about the student as possible. I plan on using some of these questions on the first day of class one day!
ReplyDeleteHey all. I just turned in my interest inventory. I had fun doing it. I really liked the process of creating the questionnaire because I had to start with the end result and work backward, which I think Professor Horwitz referred to as Understand By Design. I had to think, hmmm what do I want to know or unlock about my students? Then I had to think real hard about what kind of question or what subject matter I should use and how to form my question. Very engaging process and lots of fun. I just used Word to create it because I envisioned my students filling this out by hand and writing all over it. I will definitely use this when I become a real teacher!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed doing this assignment. I agree with Sarah and Frankie about the difficulty of coming up with questions. I didn't realize how hard it would be to come up with questions I found meaningful enough to ask students, as well as questions related to my content area. I definitely had to work backwards and think about the responses I wanted to receive before putting the question into words.
ReplyDeleteI also used Google Forms to create my interest inventory. This was my first time creating one myself rather than submitting my work on it. It was super easy to use and fun to play around with. I can definitely see myself using it in the future. I think it's really important to use different aspects of technology whenever possible to help students become more engaged and interested in assignments and participation in class. I made all of my questions required so I would get responses from all my students on all the questions.
I thought that developing questions was the hardest part of this assignment. As far as the technology goes, Google Forms was extremely user friendly, especially considering this was my first time using it. Being able to toy with the color scheme, as well as being able to add pictures, made it easy to customize it in a way that I believe might engage students.
ReplyDeleteI considered other programs, such as PowerPoint and Word, but in the end Google Forms provided the opportunity to directly collect responses without any additional steps.
I could definitely see myself using this in the future, especially if I can use Excel the way Professor Horwitz does to organize everything with timestamps, names, and links.
In many ways, I despise what technology is doing to our society, and for that reason I have my apprehensions about how it should be used in schools. That being said, having this kind of technology at our disposal does a lot of the busy work for us. Having tech that can organize to this extent will hopefully allow us to place our energy into other important areas in the future.
I really enjoyed doing my interest inventory over google forms. I feel like this will be a great resource for when I am a teacher. It is easy to use and provides a lot of great options for quizzes and surveys. I particularly liked how you could choose a variety of different types of questions. Having the option of multiple choice, check mark, long answer and short answer responses, made it easy to create the format of the interest inventory that I wanted. I was able to make some of my questions multiple choice, while others, students have to write in their response. Another great feature is having the option to make a response required. This ensures that students have to answer every question before they can turn it in.
ReplyDeleteHaving the option to add photos to Google Form made the interest inventory more personal and less invasive. I feel that adding photos makes students more likely to answer the questions accurately. For example, under the question, what do you like to do outside of school? I added a picture of of some art supplies. This shows students one of my interests, and may make them feel less like a nosey teacher is prying in their lives.
This was a great way to become familiar with google forms and I am looking forward to using it in the future. If anyone hasn’t gotten the chance to create a quiz or survey on this site I highly suggest you check it out!
Anyone want to share their inventories when this is over? I'm very interested to see how the data looks after students actually TAKE the survey--maybe we can chat about it in class tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed using Google Forms to make this interest inventory. I had never used it before and was really nervous about using it but it was so simple and easy to use. I agree that the hardest part was definitely coming up with questions that would give me the answer that I wanted, and figuring out what I wanted to know in the first place and why. I'm really glad that this is something I know how to do now because I feel like this type of technology is only going to have a bigger and bigger part in education as we move into the future.
ReplyDeleteThis was a fun activity. It was one of those activities that made me feel like and transform into an actual teacher as opposed to a student aspiring to be a teacher. I thought using technology to create the interest inventory was great and worked out very well. I felt like I had more time to be creative and was able to spend more time editing and thinking about the details than if I were to do it simply by hand or in a more traditional way. Using technology gave me many options to liven up my inventory questionnaire. I was able to easily and strategically place art clips in the questionnaire that brought life to the document and also hopefully inspired the students who take it to liberally answer the questions. Before I started the assignment I was gauging the time to be much longer than it actually took me and this was undoubtedly due to technology reasons. On a side note, even though we had a thorough lead-in to this assignment in class last week I still found it a bit difficult to craft my questions in a way that tried to take into account the many different intricacies that I could potentially encounter in my students. But by actually partaking in an assignment like this definitely helped me with my thought process. And just like anything, practice makes better.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed venturing into and exploring google forms! I had never used this before and after creating my interest inventory I can't wait to utilize this tool in the future. As most of my classmates have expressed, the questions were difficult to generate. Pinpointing exactly what I need to know about my students and how this information can help me in creating lessons etc... is easier said than done. Regardless, this was a great intro into the world of google docs.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed trying to get myself into the mindset of 'what would benefit me to know as a teacher?' That question was a lot more difficult to answer than I thought it would be. Since I am going for secondary ed. math, at first I tried to make it subject specific. For example, what would I want pre-calculus students to know before starting versus what would I like geometry students to know before starting the year? Then I tried to make it more general for all classes and reminded myself that the most important thing was really to get to know my students. I tried to make the questions general but left room for them to really give me detail about how they felt about math. The questions vary from personal interests to background in math to really try and get a whole view of the student. I found it very difficult to try and make the questions applicable to all different backgrounds. And I also struggled with what format it should be in and how to really reach all different kinds of learners. Overall, I think what I came up with would be a great start to help me know my students but also give me enough insight to maybe ask them more questions after reviewing what their answers were. I feel trial and error would really help me to modify this questionnaire to be just specific enough to give me a good idea of who my students really are.
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1PEcsBsigH8WWctQU94U05kWkcta1BxampDVngtVzAzbnZR/view?usp=drivesdk
Delete