InFORMing Your Practice

In a few weeks, I will be presenting two sessions on Google Forms at the Indiana Google Summit in Franklin, IN. As I pause to contemplate the tool I will be introducing, I also consider how it will be received by my audience - teachers, but ultimately students.

I truly wonder if students prefer online assessments as compared to physical paper copies.  Even though I don't feel that old, I am reminded that I am a generation behind these current students.  The only technology I used in schools as a kid centered around "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" or "The Oregon Trail" via six to twelve floppy disks.  Assessments were never digital - the technology wasn't available then.  Now gaming has improved exponentially, but so have assessment options that are available to teachers.

The first session I will present at the Summit will be utilizing Google Forms as a formative assessment tool.  Google Forms are incredibly easy to make, distribute, and even grade (if you are using an add-on called Flubaroo).  It appears to me that society has changed to information immediacy.  In other words, we want answers, and we want them now.  For learning and feedback to have a maximum impact, students need to receive that feedback as close to the submission of the assessment and with Google Forms this can happen.

So I guess in the age of information immediacy, technology integration, and refinement practices, Google Forms will be an effective tool for teachers and students alike.  It astonishing to see how assessment options have changed from twenty years ago.  I wonder how students will be assessed in another twenty years?