Choice Eliminator 2

Have you ever wished you could have selections disappear from your Google form, after that option had been chosen?

Maybe you're having a class party, and you'd really like to NOT have 25 people bringing in napkins. You wish that after 2 or 3 people signed up to bring napkins, that choice will just vanish so it can't be selected anymore.

Would you like to have all of these choices on said spread sheet to reappear, so you can use it again next year?

With this neat little add-on for Google Form called Choice Eliminator 2, you CAN do just that! The video below is a little long, but this add-on is well worth the watch.
Have fun!

Conditional Formatting

Have you ever wanted to just glance at your grade book spreadsheet and quickly see how your students are doing on a certain assignment, or over a certain span of time? That can be done in a snap with conditional formatting.

With just a few minutes of set up, you'll be able to glance at your spreadsheet. Check out the video and see how easy it is to make your spreadsheets pop!

The difference between PNG and JPEG

So you're creating a document, slide show, or poster via Google Drawing. It's time to add some images. Using the built in search tool within the Google app, you set out to find that image of the cute little puppy you found earlier.

However, when you add that cute puppy image, you notice it's got this white background that sticks out like a sore thumb against your purple and gold background. It doesn't look right.

What can you do?

Within the Google omnibox, after you identify the picture you want ("cute puppy clipart", add the file extension PNG to the end. The PNG, (Portable Network Graphics) results should change slightly, only showing you the images that have been saved as PNG. When you choose one of these images, it should blend well with your background.

For a more detailed look at the differences between .JPEG, .PNG or .GIF, take a look at this website.

Happy PNG'ing!

Kickin' it up With Google Forms

We've got the basic question and answers going pretty well with Google Forms. We can select various answer methods, create spreadsheet responses, add collaborators and make copies of forms shared with us. That's a pretty impressive learning curve!

What if we were to take Google Forms to the next level? What if, based on a student's answer, we could offer them some instant remediation through a video we've created and uploaded to YouTube? There are apps you could use to create your own video (My favorite is Explain Everything, available for iOS, Windows and Android), you could have your partner video tapping you giving a mini lesson on their smart phone, then upload it to YouTube (make it public so whoever is taking your practice quiz can see it).

Editorial Update: The only videos Google Forms will allow ARE YouTube videos. At the time of this video's creation, I was not aware of that. (Which is obvious, if you watch the video) Although this could not be used at school or from Google classroom, if you uploaded a "practice form" on your class webpage, then the students could practice at home, without having to log in via their school account.  
You could, however, upload a jpeg explanation of the question to help aid in student understanding and have them use THAT form at school. 

Disclaimer: At the time of this blog writing/video making, it was late. I was tired, my brain was on overload. Please forgive the scattered thoughts in this video. Hopefully the "picture is worth a thousand words" will play into this. 
Enjoy!