More With Forms, Sheets, & Add-ons…

I’ve had my mind on Forms a lot lately. Assisted a teacher with setting up Parent/Teacher conferences using Forms, Choice Eliminator add-on, and confirmation emails using formMule add-on. Then I joined an 8th Grade Team meeting. Prior to the agenda items, one Science teacher was commenting on how her students aren’t going through the process to balance equations. They think they can just stare at it and figure it out in their heads. She wished she could somehow show them a video of a particular problem when they got it wrong. That comment must have resonated with me because I awoke at 2:30am with this in my mind:
Balance Equations Master Plan

Here’s the breakdown:

  • I first started out with my iPad and the app ExplainEverything (this is what I am familiar with). I created a screencast balancing an equation. The video was uploaded to YouTube.
  • I then created a Google Form asking the basic information I needed, i.e. name and email address. Then it went to another page to ask the question. I used g(Math) add-on for Forms to be able to write the Formula. The Form will be embedded at the bottom of this post.
  • I then went to the Sheet to start working on all the magic. I first had to activate the add-on copyDown so I can have an ‘IF’ formula copy to every Form submission. This formula checks the answer submitted to either issue a 1 if it is balanced (correct) or a 0 if the problem is unbalanced (incorrect). This 0 or 1 would be my trigger for an email template.
  • I followed copyDown with the formMule add-on, setup for two different email templates: correct or incorrect. At first the correct email stated basically that, later this will evolve. The incorrect email provided a link to the YouTube video for reference.

This worked nicely, but after a couple of tries, I thought about the students who balanced the equation correctly; they deserved recognition.

  • I created a certificate in Google Docs with tags referencing information from the Google Form.
  • Using the autoCrat add-on for Sheets, I was able to pull information and compile it into the Doc. autoCrat generates an individualized link to each, I chose .pdf, file. This link was now added to the balanced email template.


If you would like to try it out, go ahead. Please note, email addresses will not be sold to third party advertisers and you will not be spammed by me. Enjoy!

What have you done with Google Apps and Add-ons?  Feel free to comment below!

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