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Google Forms and Flubaroo: Less Paper, More Teaching
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only in classroom organization and
management, but also in the assessment of students’ knowledge.
Google Forms and Flubaroo are
free technologies that teachers can
harness for planning lessons, assessing students, and getting to know their
classes. These applications can speed
up the time it takes to grade and evaluate students by providing instant access
to important data through item analysis. They can allow teachers to identify
areas where students need more help.
Paper, paper, and more paper! Being a teacher means having to manage homework, quizzes,
and tests. The sheer volume of paper
that teachers need to evaluate on a
weekly basis makes it difficult to find
time to analyze which questions students missed the most or which questions they really understood. Often by
the time a teacher can do this type of
evaluation, several days have passed.
The voluminous amount of paper
does not end with grading. Managing
classroom trips and extracurricular
activities, conducting surveys, and
planning lessons add even more paper
to a teacher’s workload. Yet a teacher’s
primary responsibility is to instruct
students well so they can be proficient
digital age students. Using technology
to accomplish some of the day-to-day
activities adds valuable and much-
needed time for student instruction.
Collecting Student Information
Forms are tools that collect data
teachers can evaluate for planning
instruction. One fifth grade teacher
used Google Forms to create a survey
for the first day of class. Students took
turns filling out the survey on one
classroom computer. By the end of
the day, the teacher had a record of
students’ favorite subjects, what they
liked about science, and what they
wanted to learn during the school
year. She used this survey to find out
what students’ interests were and
planned science lessons based on
those interests. For instance, several
students indicated they played soccer.
She was able to plan a unit on insects
that lived on the soccer field. Her students loved that they were learning
science on the soccer field.
