Last summer at the Great Plains Google Summit, I learned how to embed video into a Google form.  I’m sure a million people knew how to do this before me, but what a great trick–especially on a substitute day.  All the students have to do is go to their gmail, click on the link, watch the video, and answer the questions.  Bing, bang, boom–great lesson plan!

Until I tried it for the first time.  Our school has youtube locked down tighter than the Hope Diamond, so the video was unaccessible.  I asked our tech coordinator extraordinaire to open up the video, but still no luck!  Alas, I ended up playing the video on the projector and they answered the questions on the form.  Ever since, I’ve put a hyperlink into the directions on the Google form, so students can go to YouTube, watch the video in one tab, and answer the questions in the other.

Is it a big deal that they have to separate into two windows to do this?  Not really.  It’s just…not as spiffy.

This week, I’m trying a new workaround.  In my goal to gain more experience with Google sites, I created a Jonathan Swift Intro page (The Brit Lit kiddoes will be reading excerpts from Gulliver’s Travels and “A Modest Proposal” over the next two weeks.)  After creating my slideshow, recording my voiceover, and uploading it to YouTube, I embedded the video to the page.  Then I created the form (with my fancy schmancy custom Gulliver’s Travels banner) and embedded that to the page.  It’s almost as slick as embedding the video directly into the form.  (BTW, here’s the video)

I haven’t had a chance to check its efficacy, but I’ll find out in the next two days.  I’ve embedded YouTube videos to my classroom blog before and, once they’ve been opened on the filter, they’ve worked.  Hopefully this will, too.

The overall site is EXTREMELY rough–it’s a summer project plan.  But if you want to check out my Jonathan Swift Intro page, go here: Jonathan Swift Intro