Google Forms FINALLY Loves Math

4/19/2015

This will be quick because I'm excited to get back to messing around with what Google Forms can now do. It started here:

@MathButler @Jstevens009 @MrVaudrey DUDE! gmath on forms addon works for responses now?!?!?
— Dan Bennett (@dabennett7) April 18, 2015

Even before this, I knew Dan Bennett was a genius. The "oh I just stumbled onto it" bit doesn't work on me, buddy. You're the man. OK fine, but what does this really mean for math teachers? We can now ask questions that elicit handwritten responses, graphed responses, responses with fractions, radicals, exponents, OH MAH WORD.

The steps to awesomeness:

1. Create a Google Form for an assessment of your choosing.

2. Install the g(Math) for Forms Add-on

3. Click on "Deploy g(Math) for responses to this Form"

4. Give Google permission to own you (they already do, so this is a reasonable trade-off for what you're about to do)

5. On the right-hand side of the form, a column will pop up. Click the blue button that says "Deploy".

6. Click "Set Trigger on Form Submit". This will convert all of the responses to images, which will be incredibly handy.

7. In the g(Math) colum, there is a hyperlink that says "Deployed URL". Click on that and share it as the link for students to take the assessment.

8. The students complete the assessment with g(Math) hanging out alongside them the whole time. Like this:

9. At the bottom of the g(Math) column, there is a place to copy the image location (to later be pasted) into the response box for whatever question the student is working on.

10. Do 12 push-ups, 7 sit-ups, and high five your closest neighbor. You're about to get excited.

11. Once they're done, students will click "Submit" and you get to sit by the response spreadsheet and dream about giving Google a math hug. A really, really, big one.

It's still a baby, so I'm sure there are kinks to work out, but this just made life better. For real. Speech to math, LaTex integration (for those of you smart enough to use it), and so much more. I'm giddy.

Richard Byrne, founder of Free Tech For Teachers, also did a post on this and it's worth checking out.

Happy "Finding Someone Who Is As Excited As You About Math" Fishing

13 Comments

Chris

4/20/2015 08:33:06 am

This is so cool. Thanks for sharing!

Kristin

4/21/2015 05:01:44 am

Thanks for this tutorial! I used your exact example and I'm having trouble with what happens after step 11 - I've followed all the steps and when I go to the google spreadsheet where all the responses are I just have the link I copy and pasted (not an image of my handwriting). There is also no preview of my answer in the latex preview box like in the image under #10. I have been sure to do all the other steps and double checked it multiple times - any suggestions?

Teacher

4/21/2015 11:11:24 pm

Thanks for posting.
I'm having trouble using the handwriting reponse.
I understand that it is a beta version.
Perhaps instead of translating using Latex a jpeg could be made and submitted?
Mathematical expressions as responses are not translated well at this time.
Any advice?

Kristen link

4/21/2015 11:32:30 pm

Thanks for this! I love the idea of it but am having some of the same issues as Kristin (see comment above).

For the responses I'm just seeing the text I copied in. And the handwriting option just gave me latex errors.

There are obviously bugs that need to be worked out, but hopefully they can be fixed!

Chris W

4/22/2015 03:32:18 am

Yeah I was really excited, but I get an error in the Latex code and nothing to paste. Same issue as those above.

Shin-Shin Lin

4/25/2015 07:31:35 am

Awesome! It can be used to write the Chinese characters as well. I tried this add-on in Google docs. It works wonderfully also. Thanks for sharing.

Cassy M

10/19/2015 09:20:57 pm

I followed your directions and when it comes into the spreadsheet there is a ' at the beginning of the text that was copied. Once I deleted that ' the images came in. Is there some way to delete all of those from the fields? It is happening on all of them. The handwriting, graph.

Amanda

10/27/2015 05:09:04 pm

Thanks for posting about the ' at the beginning of the text. I could not figure out why it wasn't displaying the images. This was the issue, and now if I go back and delete the '...the image appears!

Cassy M

11/6/2015 07:50:13 am

Amanda,
My team member figured out that once you are in the spreadsheet you can go up to edit, find and replace, put an ' to find and replace it with
click on the (also search within formulas)
That did all of them at the same time.

Ricky Gant

11/17/2016 05:16:23 am

did you find a better solution to the '=image problem in g(math)

Cassy M

11/6/2015 07:51:46 am

I am wondering why g"math" does not have the Pi symbol as a choice. This is cause some issues for our 8th graders.

Alyssa

7/14/2016 04:03:28 pm

Hi All
I cannot figure out how to have the images show up. I pressed deploy then turned on the recommended setting but it still shows =Image("https://api.gmath.guru/cgi-bin/gmath?g_%7Bn%7D%3Dg_%7B1%7D%5Ccdot%20r%5E%7Bn-1%7D")

Any suggestions?

Judy Griffin

2/20/2017 09:38:36 am

In the spreadsheet, you have to take out the apostrophe ' that somehow appears between students copy and paste and the answers in the spreadsheet form. However, now when the image appears in the spreadsheet, I am only seeing part of the graph or handwriting, not the entire thing that students submitted.

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