Continuous formation

A nice feature now in Microsoft Forms : File Upload! (Remember that all of Office365 -- including Forms and OneNote-- are free to teachers & students ) This is a great option for both Forms and Quizzes... you can now ask people to do work in OneNote and then screenclip it ( using the built-in Windows10 Snip like here ) and then upload it alongside their multiple choice selection ... just for example.  It's also useful for asking folks for Word documents (recommendations?), PowerPoints, etc.  When you create a Form or a Quiz you can have your respondent give you a file (or files).  It's hidden under the "more" of the question type: When you choose File Upload, you get a pop-up that a folder will be created in your OneDrive; it's under the APPS folder (that may also get created the first time!).  The name of the folder is the name of the Form/Quiz.  You can specify the number and maximum size of the files -- and if you choose the 3-dot More you ...

So, as I'm getting ready for our training for new Faculty I thought I'd put together the steps for making a survey or collecting data. You can see some of my other posts on Microsoft Forms by clicking the link . 1. VISIT http://forms.microsoft.com and sign in with your Office365 ID/password.  Or click on the FORMS button in the Waffle.  Or click the FORMS button if you're in OneNote. Remember that you or your School can sign up for Office365 for free. Button in OneNote Button on the Office365 Waffle 2. To keep this short, I'll only be covering Forms part of Microsoft Forms, where you just collect data without "grading" or "providing feedback".  There's a whole Quiz part of Forms that I'll cover later.  Too much all at once.  So, CLICK on "New Form" or, if you already have a Form, click on its card. (You may also have Forms that have been Shared With You or Forms that you have access to as part of an existing Group, s...

So the shape of things to come, I suppose. We just finished up with March Break and we send a Report Card (marks & comments) home with the students as they go on holiday.  As they were coming back for the last term, I thought I would do a temperature check with them when they got back (if I get to write an evaluation of them, it only seems fair!) This time, rather than using Microsoft Forms ( like here ), I used a chat bot (an automated conversation) where the student would talk with the chat bot and then sentiment analysis would be performed on the data.  Not only would the student's written content be considered but also how they wrote it and what word or phrasings they used. I had all three sections interact with the chat bot (the link was posted in their OneNote) and I stepped out of the room to give them a chance for some privacy. I did mention to them that this was experimental, that they didn't have to do it and that it was anonymous (modulo the usual "nothi...

So Twitter serves up a lot of great tips, tricks, techniques and shortcuts for busy teachers. Choosing to follow the right folks helps prevent a lot of the nonsense. Eric Curts ( Twitter ) provided one to help Math teachers with quick formative assessments : Making Google Forms Quizzes with Math (Free, Easy, and Quick) . It's just as free, quicker and easier with Microsoft Forms ... and remember that Microsoft is free to all schools, teachers & students. So Eric wanted to make this problem below into a self-marking Quiz.  He had to use a separate app to create the math, change it into an image and then paste the URL to get the Math into Google Forms.  With Microsoft Forms, it's all included -- reduces the workload considerably! From Eric Curts (@ericcurts) Visit https://forms.office.com and click on Getting Started and log in with your School Microsoft Account. Don't have a School Microsoft Account?  Again, it's free for schools, teachers & students -...

We just finished our report cards for the first Report Period and, in anticipation of giving them formal feedback, I asked my students to do a self-reflection of their Learning Skills, and to provide me with some feedback.  (If you'd like to know more about the Learning Skills we assess, the chart is on Page 11 in Growing Success ). I headed over to Microsoft Forms https://forms.office.com and copied the text from our Report Card so that they would read the same text they'll get at the end of this week.  They then had the ability to rank themselves just as I had to.  I also added two text boxes at the bottom of the Survey: What comments do you have to explain your ratings above? What evidence do you have that the highest or lowest rating is true & fair to you?  What feedback do you have for me or for the course? I always add the last comment on any survey I send out to anybody ... it's always important to give folks a chance to add on anything they ha...

So,, the above quote is true... I'm always on my phone in class.  For one, I take a lot of pictures ( see the previous post, for example ) - my students treat every surface like a whiteboard, and I like keeping track of what students are doing. I also created a Microsoft Form ( http://forms.microsoft.com ) to track learning skills and other observations of learning.  What's nice is that everything gets pushed into an Excel Spreadsheet and I can pull out by day, by section, by student, by learning skill -- and because it's automatically date/time stamped I can also match pictures to anecdotes. When I first opened the form on my phone in the browser, I made sure to click on ADD TO HOME SCREEN in the browser menu so that I could get a button I can easily tap each time I want to make an entry. I teach three sections of Grade 10 Math, so my first question is which section I am adding a note to.  Now, I could have made three different forms but then I would have had th...