Forms (surveys)

When you need to gather information from parents, students or other staff members, Forms is the tool to use! I've used Forms for formal teacher to main office communications such as grade change notifications. A Form was created and the link shared with students  to sign up for extra-curricular activities. Another Form was created and by sharing the link with parents, we were easily able to get feedback about meeting dates. There is a wide variety of uses for Forms, and depending on the audience/purpose of the Form can be as professional or informal as the author wishes it to be.

The author decides who will have access to the form, and can even collect the senders' email addresses. Setting up a shareable link, you can allow anybody with the link to access the form! Just enter the link in an email, or on any correspondence and parents/students/staff members will be able to submit feedback immediately! The feedback (answers) received from Forms can be displayed  in Sheets and easily converted to other formats (Excel for example)!

Creating a Form is super easy:

1. Go to google forms: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/ 

2. Select either a blank template - or one of the free templates available

3. Give the form a title, and click the"+" to add questions. You can choose from short answer questions, multiple choice, dropdowns, etc. - you can select "required" for any/all questions!

4. Be sure to check out the gear icon (Settings) for further options - such as decide if you want to collect the email address of the respondent. 

5. When you are ready - hit Send - can be sent via email, as a link or embed in a site!

Responses:

• Choose to create a new spreadsheet with the responses - once your data is in sheets - the possibilities are endless!

• Print each response so it looks like a completed form - See this walkthrough created with Scribe

For a complete - awesome guide check out this awesome post from the How To Geek: The Beginner's Guide to Google Forms