Going grade-less has opened me up to giving students feedback that will help them move their learning in the right direction. I no longer spend my time trying to find a percentage or letter or mark to reduce their work. I read it and tell them what is working and what they still need. My 8th graders are working on a Mini Science Fair with a focus on plants. I put together a form to help teams plan their project. As teams complete the online Google form I get their responses on the spreadsheet. Last time I used Google form for feedback I struggled to find an efficient and paperless way to get the feedback to the students. I regret to say that I went with efficiency and printed out paper copies of the feedback.
This time I again typed my responses and questions on the Google spreadsheet. I copied and pasted each team’s response onto its own separate spreadsheet. Oh and btw, this time was easier because I have fewer teams than I do students! So I exported the feedback spreadsheet as an excel spreadsheet. Then I emailed that excel to the team captain since I have an email account for each team. The captains opened the file in Office2 HD where they could respond to my questions and email it back to me right from the Office2 HD app. It’s been working very well and we’re almost paperless. Almost because team captains wrote their ideas on paper until they were ready to fill out the Google form because they can’t save their form and work on it the next day. Too bad. Are they every going to fix that?
One team had a great idea. Learning about photosynthesis they wanted to try and grow a plant in a space bag to see how growing in a vacuum affects the plant vs one growing in air! They called the space bag company to try and get a free bag but they’ve got the run around. Too bad. I did email the company to see what they can do.
