Virtual Voyage: Google Forms

In May, I stumbled across the idea of sending out parent surveys using Google Forms. Our school and district have parents complete end of year surveys, but the feedback is not specific to individual teachers. I liked the idea of having parents provide me with feedback based on their experience with my classroom. This also terrified me. Would I be able to handle criticism? Sending it out there took a bit of a risk and I didn't share with many colleagues what I was doing. I wanted to see the reaction I got first.

I found Google Forms extremely easy to use. I created a combination of question types: open ended, multiple choice, etc. I kept it fairly short and anonymous. I wanted parents to feel comfortable giving me criticism.

I sent the survey out via email to my homeroom class about 2 weeks before the end of the school year. While I received some valuable feedback, I did not get very many responses from parents. In fact, I only had 3/20 complete the survey.

I could have sent out more reminder emails to parents to complete the survey. I also think next year, I may try sending out the survey at the halfway point in the year. This way any changes I make based on their feedback would be implemented for their child. I thought this might increase participation.

Has anyone else tried using google forms for parent surveys? Did you have good participation?

Here is the link to my survey if you'd like to check it out:

End of Year Parent Survey

Virtual Voyage: Feedly

At a district workshop this summer, I learned about using Feedly as a way to manage all of the blogs that I enjoy reading. I set up my Feedly account and divided the content into different categories. My current categories are:

- Education blogs - these include generic blogs and blogs that cover educational policy. Some of my favorites are Edutopia & Edudemic

- District blogs - these include our district technology blogs and blogs of fellow teachers from within my district

- Teacher blogs - there are a lot of great teacher blogs that I go to for lesson ideas and inspiration. I love having Feedly to organize all of these blogs. Two of the teacher blogs that I follow are 4th Grade Frolics and Teaching with a Mountain View.

- Tech blogs - there are some great blogs out there that cater specifically to the use of technology in the classroom. Those blogs fall under this category in my feedly. One blog that I found recently is Shake Up Learning. This blog has some great tips on gamification in the classroom.

Overall I've been pleased with Feedly. I like that I can share posts via social media directly from the site. I also like that I can save a post to Pocket. I've used Pocket to organize specific posts by topics so that I can refer to them later.