My students' needs are evolving, and one of the things that I have found is this: not all of my kids appreciate uploading assignments through Moodle Honestly, many of them would rather have a tooth pulled, and so I have gone to Plan B: the Google Form. They can cut and paste their work and quickly enter things in. I can take a look at the form and easily see the problems, the answers, and the misconceptions. This seems to me to be a win-win, as I have created a mini-database of questions and answers without entering a plethora of data responses.
As I reflected on this in my physics classes, I began a new experiment. A requirement of my class is now a Google account. Assignments, graphs, and logger pro data forms are uploaded and shared with me for assignment credit. My biggest challenge is simply sorting the data into the right folder in my documents.
This process does not allow the deep, rich discussion present in an online forum, but it does have advantages. For example, I am able to share the entire data set with my students and have in-class discussion that is focused solely on the data reported, or the metacognition that students share with me.
In this example, I have the following form:
Here are some of the comments to be shared with my kids as we prepare for group discussion in my face-to-face or reflective time (perhaps this could be used as a backchannel prompt?):
What kind of a discussion would this lead to in your classroom?
