Out with the Old, In with Bloglovin'

I am a huge Google fan and have been so bummed out with the retirement of Google Reader. Why, Google???? How will I keep up with all of my favorite blogs and how will people follow my blog? Enter...Bloglovin. I've only been using it for a few hours and already I love it. You can easily import your feeds from Google Reader, and the format of Bloglovin is visually appealing. There's very little "clutter" on the screen, and it's easy to scroll through your favorite blogs. So I made the switch. If you'd like to follow me on bloglovin, you can click the link below. Also, feel free to grab the image I made if you want it for your blog. Just please link back to my blog.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Make My Forms Yours: A How-To Guide

  

After recently receiving a very kind email asking how to change some information in the forms I've shared (Guided Math Form and Reading Record Form), I thought maybe more than one person needed to know how. So, I've created this quick tutorial:

1. First, open the spreadsheet that I shared in the posts I've linked above. 
2. On the File menu, click Make a copy...
3. Enter a name for your copy of the form and click okay. You're new form will open automatically.
4. On the form menu, click Edit Form. 
5. A new window will open that looks like the picture below. You'll be able to edit each question and the theme if you wish. 

The best part is, everything is saved automatically! 

Good luck, and if you have any questions, please let me know. I'll be glad to help!

AETC 2012: My Smack Down List

Well, if you follow me on twitter, you know that I've been at AETC the past two days. What a great conference! Aside from meeting with great friends and colleagues and presenting a session, I took away some great ideas I hope to implement in my classroom. Here's my AETC Smackdown:

• Twitter Book Reports: Students create book teasers. They can even post a link to the book or a picture of the book. (From my friend, Julie D. Ramsay). My classroom has a twitter account and the students tweet what we're learning each day. We'd love to connect with your class on twitter! We're @kilgosnews. 
• Innovation Day: For one day students choose what to learn, and how to learn it. They work all day on their self-selected topic and create a presentation they use to teach the class. (Also from Julie).
• VoiceThread: I knew about this free webtool, but haven't put it to use yet. I plan to this year. (from Julie)
• Use Google Forms for creating rubrics. (From my friend, Amanda C. Dykes)

My biggest take-away had to do with using QR codes in the classroom. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but just needed to know a little more about it.

The Daring Librarian has tons of great ideas and tips for using QR codes. You just HAVE to check it out if you're curious about them.

i-nigma is a fabulous multi-platform app for reading QR codes. It scans quickly and saves your scans in your history.

QR Stuff is a great site for making codes for anything: videos, websites, text, etc...And for all of you color-coding OCD people out there (me) you can create QR Codes in color!

I'm really still trying to process all of the fabulous information! Do you use any of the tools I mentioned? If so, I'd love to know what you do. Maybe our classes could even collaborate on something together. Please share.

Creating a Google Form

A few days ago I posted an idea for using Google Forms to keep track of your anecdotal reading records. I can't wait to use this next year! Here is a step by step guide to creating your form:

Step 1: Log in to your Google Account and click "Documents"

Step 2: Click "Create" and choose Form.

Step 3: Give your form a title and description and create your first question. My question says "What is your favorite genre?" I chose "text" as the answer type, so people (or I) can type in answers. 

Step 4: Hover over the sample 2 question and click on the edit button. When you do this, you will see the same question editing set up as above. You can then create another question.

Step 5: You can also add questions by clicking +Add Item in the upper left corner. Add as many questions as you would like, in as many varieties as you would like. 

*Note: You may want to play with the different question types. I used the "Choose from a list" option for my drop-down menu questions. You can add as many or as few options as you'd like. You may also want to leave the first option blank. I did this on my reading records form because I noticed that in the resulting spreadsheet whatever is in the first box is recorded, whether or not I actually choose that option. Plus, I like how it looks on the form for the dropdown box to be empty until the person chooses one of the options. 

Step 6: Make it Cute! In the upper left corner beside the +Add Item you will see a button labeled "Theme: Plain." Click this button and choose from one of the themes provided for your form. When you find one you click, click on it and you will see a preview of your form. Click Apply. 

Step 7: You're done, but how do you access it? There are several ways to do this, but what I did is use the "Email this form" button at the top right of the page, and emailed myself the link. Once the link is open in your browser (iPad or PC) you can save it to your desktop for easy access. 

Step 8: Where's the data? You can access your data by either using the "See Responses" button in the upper right corner, or by clicking on the title of the form in your list of Google Docs. 

Do you used Google forms or other Google docs in the classroom? I look forward to hearing how you use them, or plan to use them. Please let me know if you have any problems and I'll help out.