How to use Google Drive to Benefit your Counseling Program

Natalie Mecaughey is our newest Lesson Leader. Natalie has a great blog, The Urban Educator, and has a great lesson, not for your kiddos, but for you. . .about Google Drive. I use Google Drive and appreciate it’s ease and awesome ability to gather data. Natalie has summed it up well for everyone below:

Have you ever had a document you were working on with a colleague and every time you edited the document, you had to send it back and forth via email? It starts to get very confusing – what is the most current document? Who made the last edit? Then… if you make an edit and didn’t have the most updated version… well, now you’re in trouble! You find yourself scrambling to fix and edit two versions and it can get very frustrating. Google drive (google docs, presentations,
spreadsheets, & forms) can help out with this problem. You can create files that other people can edit and there is no need to send anything to each other. If you haven’t played around with sharing google docs and files, I suggest trying it out and seeing how to use it for your needs.

In addition to file sharing, google also has invented google forms. Google forms can be so helpful for many things, I’m finding new uses every day. For example: if you need to know students who would benefit from an anger management group – instead of sending an email, send a google form! All the responses will be organized for you in a spreadsheet and you can ask multiple questions and have
answers listed in a drop down box or even a scale – as opposed to everyone writing out their responses. Here is an example I made (took me about 2 minutes):

I personally use google forms to document my student notes. I type information such as student name, grade and then document the topic of our conversation using checkmark from a list of topics. I don’t put anything in the form that I wouldn’t say comfortably to a parent or a teacher, it is really just to document our interaction.

Using the forms is so helpful because with the drop down menu, checkboxes, multiple choices, lists, scales, grids – it is really easy to filter the information you are looking for. I am a visual learner so check out my latest post on my blog, The

Urban Educator, to see examples of my Student Notes form.

Also, I created a presentation so you can learn how to create your account, how to access your google drive, how to create your google form and how to use your google form!

I promise you, the best way to figure out how to use google drive and specifically, google forms is to PLAY AROUND WITH IT and then test it out! You won’t break anything!! Once you create your google form through your google drive, there will automatically be a (Responses) table created that will show your responses in your google drive. This table will show you all of your responses and you can sort by grade, type or student (it will automatically sort by date). Creating the graphs below are fantastic and super easy. This really is the EASIEST part of the data collection process. See photo below…all you have to do is click on FORM – SHOW SUMMARY OF RESPONSES and google creates that pretty little color coded graphs with all of your data 🙂

Here is a quick emaze presentation Natalie also has for you on how to use google forms:

Thanks, Natalie!

Want to look at another? Here is mine from a previous post, where I show you how to use data for an academic improvement group.

Want to be a Lesson Leader or do you have other ways that you use Google Drive? Join the discussion by joining in below:

The Middle School Counselor Facebook Page

The Middle School Counselor on Twitter

Caught In The Middle School Counselors (Facebook Group)

High School Counselors’ Network(Facebook Group)

Elementary School Counselor Exchange (Facebook Group)

The Middle School Counselor App