Google Form Voting for Pumpkins
Hi friends!
We are using a Google Form this week to let our students vote for their favorite teacher-created pumpkin!
Last week, at our faculty meeting, our principal provided pumpkins, paint, and cookies, and each teaching team took 45 minutes to create a decorated pumpkin. It was a fun, team-building activity. This week, our students are voting for their favorite, using a Google form on iPad minis.
I’ve had a few questions about how this works. I know many of you are planning voting activities in the next few weeks, so I’ll explain step-by-step how we did it.
In the picture above, you can see that even a kindergarten student can vote with this ballot of picture choices. On the iPad, they can choose a response by either tapping the bubble next to the words or tapping the image, so it’s great for non-readers.
Then they tap the blue “SUBMIT” button at the bottom of the form.
Are these pumpkins amazing, or what?
Here’s how I created this ballot using a Google Form. You can do this for any student voting you have planned in YOUR library! It’s easy, peasy, I promise!
Create a Google Form with Images
In your Google Drive, choose <New>, then <More>, then <Google Forms>.
Your screen should look like this.
When I CLICK on Option 1, you can see that I’m now able to type words for option 1 on the blue line, and/or click the image icon on the right to add an image.
Add the name of the first option, then add your image.
Now you are ready to click on “Add Option.” Add the text and picture for your second option.
Continue typing options and adding images, until you’ve added all the choices you want students to vote on.
At any time, you can click on the eye in the upper right corner to preview what your final form will look like.
When your form is finished, you can send it by email or link. I chose a link, then sent the link to the home screen of the iPad.
View Your Results
This is a really cool part! When you look at your form in your Google Drive, you can see your responses as a pie chart or as a spreadsheet!
As of Tuesday, we’ve had 215 responses, and we’ve got a color-coded pie chart of the responses! No more counting paper ballots! I can see at a glance who the winner is.
You can click on this icon on the top right to view your results in Google Sheets.
The results are more precise in Google Sheets, if you need that. You can see each vote with a date and time stamp, and you can sort the vote column, to get all of the same votes together for counting.
I promise it’s super easy and will make voting a breeze for pumpkins, book characters, or whatever you choose to vote for in YOUR library!
If you have any voting tips to add, please let us know with a comment!
Wow! Thanks so much for sharing. Can’t wait to use it. It will be perfct for The Reader’s Choice Awards.
I agree, Gwyn! It’s so much easier to remember what book you want to vote for when you can see the cover. I’ll use this with our Bluebonnet voting this year, too!
Cari
How do you send the link to the iPad home screen? Your students do not need a Google account to vote do they?
What I did was to create a short link to the Google Form with tinyurl.com. Then I used the Safari browser on the iPad to navigate to the Google Form, using the tinyurl. Then I tapped the share icon, and sent a shortcut to the home screen of the iPad. Does that make sense?
Cari
Great idea! I’m not surprised that the Pokeball was popular 🙂 I will have our younger students (K-2) vote on our state Mn North Star Picture Book Award and include the pictures of the covers. Love that Google forms allows an image.
Thanks for your comment, Lesli! Google forms with pictures make it easy to allow our younger students to vote!
Cari