I’m not a parent.  However, I can imagine if I was, and if my child was sick, I would forget to send a written note into the teacher.  Even if the teacher reminded me every morning, I would forget by the time I got home.

With this in mind, I decided to create an online absence note for parents like the type of parent I imagine I’ll be.  I did it using Google Apps – specifically Google Forms.  In this article, I’m going to run through how to set up a simple online Absence note.

Before we begin, you’ll need a Google account, so I’m going to assume you have one.  I’m also going to assume you know how to get to the Google Docs section whatever type of Google account you have.

Once you’re in your Google Documents section, you’re going to need to set up a new form.  This is easily done. Simply click on “Create New” and select ”Form”.

You’ll automatically be transported to the Google Forms creation area, which looks like this:

The next step is deciding what sort of questions are going to be asked.  In our school’s absence form, we just ask for the dates of absence, the note itself and the teacher’s name.  As with everything Google, it’s very easy to do this.

Google Forms comes with two questions set up by default and your first job is to edit them.  You are prompted to type in your question, help text and the type of question you are asking.

In our case, my first question is: “Dates of Absence”.

My help text explains what I’d like the user to type in.  I’ll put the text, “Please type in the dates that your child was absent.”

I’ll leave the question type alone because I’m only looking for a one line response.  We’ll look at the other types of questions shortly.  I also want to make sure that the user answers this question so I tick the box “Make this a required question.”  If the user fills out the form, they will not be able to submit it until they have answered this question.

We’ll now get ready to write the second question.  To access the “Sample Question 2″, we need to click on the edit button, which you’ll find on the right hand side.

The other two buttons are “duplicate” and “trash”.  Click trash if you want to dump a question and click duplicate if you want to duplicate a question if it is similar.

Once you click on the edit button, you can fill in the required information just like in the first step.  In our case, we’re going to ask for the reason for the absence.  I give the parents a paragraph to do this so I change the question type to “Paragraph text”.  I also make this a required question.

Now for my third question.  Google only gave us two questions to play around with so we’ll need to add in a new question to ask parents to name the teacher the message should go to.   To do this, we’ll need to click on “Add Item”.

In my case, I’m going to keep this as a text box so I’ll click on this.  However, another idea would be to give parents a list of teachers’ names and they could select that.  So let’s pretend our school has 3 teachers: Mairéad, Seán and Ciarán.  If I click on the “Add Item” button, this time I’m going to select “Choose from a list”.  My question will be “Select your child’s teacher” and in the bottom section, I can add the names of the teachers, one by one.

Once I’m happy with my questions, I need to give my form a title and a description.  This can be done at the top of the form by simply filling in the required fields.  Once that’s out of the way, click “Done” on the bottom of the page and..you’re done!

To put this form on your school’s web site, you can embed it by clicking on the “More Actions” button and selecting “Embed”.  The resulting code can be copied to your school web site and will show up nicely.  Another way is to copy the link which appears at the bottom of the page and use this to link to the full page.

Google Forms allows you to “pretty” up your forms with various themes.  On the top left of the screen you’ll see a button called “Theme: Plain”.  Click on this and you’ll find an array of different themes to make your form look nice. Once you find one you like, click on Apply and you’re done. Below is one that I’ve chosen.

I bet you’re all thinking, “BUT anyone could fill in the absence note! How do you know it’s the parent who is filling in the form?”

You’re probably right and, while at primary level, it’s usually not going to be a problem, you never know what some of the more senior pupils are capable of so I’m going to add in another question to the form.

How about a simple text box question asking for a phone number to confirm the absence?  The help box will say “It is the school’s policy to telephone parents on this number to confirm absences.  Failure to fill in this question will result in the form being invalid.”

Another idea to help with administration of the absence is to ask parents to fill in the type of absence that you’ll be sending to the NEWB.  A drop down list would be best suited here.

We obviously need to be able to see all the responses to the forms being filled in.  Google cleverly creates a spreadsheet so that all responses are entered into it automatically for simple reading.  To access the spreadsheet, go to Google Doc and click on the name of the form.  The spreadsheet will open with the responses and you can do what you like with them. I generally copy the text and forward it on to the teacher.

How do you know when someone has filled in the form?  If you open up the Spreadsheet, you can click on the Share button and then “Set Notification Rules”.

In here, simply check the boxes “Any changes are made” and “Email – right away”.  With this, every time somebody fills out the form, you’ll get an email alerting you.

Google forms can be used for all sorts of things.  In our school, we use them for yard accident reports, ordering resources and surveys for staff.  I’ve seen Google Forms being used for lots of other uses.  One of my favourite ways was using it alongside iPod Touches for a live survey at the CESI conference.  If you have any ideas for using Google Forms in a school setting or have seen it used in an interesting way, I’d love to hear from you.  If you can find any caveats with how we’re using it, let me know and we’ll see if there’s a solution.