Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Create a Google Form to track professional and parent contact

Why a form?
By using a form you don't have to remember what information to log and all the information is in one place and easy to access.  This type of information makes sense if you want to track all communication or log time spent on activities all in one place.  If you prefer to log information per student this might make more sense to put in your gradebook.  You can always copy the information from the form responses into your gradebook comments to keep a log AND keep with student records.  I find it easiest to keep all contacts in one place.  Emails are easy to save but you still may want to log emails and reference the save location in case you need documentation.  Either way, it's smart to log your communication somewhere and I found this to be a quick and easy fix.  The initial form takes 20 minutes to make and logging contacts at the time is a breeze.

 Start with a form that allows you to select the type of contact Parent or Professional



Question type choose from a list.
Then you can choose the box go to page based on answer if the form will be different based on the contact type.


I then select the information I want to collect.  I make sure I add a time/date option but the form will be automatically time stamped for the date you fill it out so if you fill it out at the time of the conversation you don’t have to put in a separate time/date.

The results will print to a spreadsheet for you to have a log.


Finally, share your link with yourself on your desktop.  I put it on my webpage.  It could be a resource in Schoology or you can put the link in a Word document and save the document to your desktop for easy access.