Let's Get Together, Yeah Yeah Yeah . . . (Collaboration at Its Finest)

When I think of collaboration, I can't help but think of Parent Trap.  Maybe it's because I am a twin, or maybe it's because I loved watching this movie growing up, but regardless, great things happen when you collaborate.

Imagine the great things that could take place in education or your classroom when collaboration is involved!  This is one of the biggest reasons I love Google Drive.  (If you want to learn more about what Google Drive is, read my "Let Google Drive" post from January.)  Not only is Google Drive accessible on any device, you can collaborate with others on a shared doc, sheets, slides, etc.
By clicking on the blue share button you can select people to share with and give them editing privileges, or just the ability to view or comment.


I coach track and made a shared Google Sheets for our meet sign ups.  Each coach was able to enter their athletes and take note of other entries.  (The blue and pink outlines represent two users inputting info at the same time.)  To learn more about collaborating on Google Apps, check out this website.


Google Drive has so many apps to offer.  Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are the most common, but let me introduce you to a new one.


Google Forms is a great tool to use if you want to survey your students or give a quiz.  You can select a variety of question formats:  short answer, paragraph, multiple choice, check boxes, drop down, linear scale, multiple choice grid, date, and time.  You can add an image or YouTube to go along with the question.

I love the ease of creating forms and the ability to personalize them, as well as how the responses are collected.  By clicking on the response tab, I can see how everyone responded and compare answers.

My favorite option is exporting all of my results to a Google Sheets where I run an add-on called "Flubaroo."  Flubaroo will grade every entry and identify areas for improvement.

To learn more about Flubaroo, check out this YouTube.

Sharing your Google Form with others can be simple  Usually I post the link to my student's Google Classroom page.  But what if you don't have an online format to post a link to and the URL is extremely long and confusing?  Thankfully there are many URL shortening services.  Here are a few to try:
https://goo.gl/
https://bitly.com/
http://tinyurl.com/
My favorite is tinyurl because I can create custom URLs that are easy to remember.  Sometimes I create a URL that says something quirky about math or that includes the name of the quiz or survey I am giving.  If you want to check out one of my Google Form quizzes, here is the tinyurl that I created for it:  http://tinyurl.com/parentfunctionsquiz

Another cool feature of Google Drive is its template gallery.  Check it out here.  This template gallery has thousands of templates for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.

Instead of creating something from scratch, find a template and adjust it for your needs.  A couple of templates that I found and will be using are student certificates, a monthly calendar, and a cover page with correct headings in APA formatting.  Explore for yourself and find templates to make your life easier.

When we collaborate, everything is better, yeah yeah yeah!