www.fillanypdf.com is a tool that allows you to take any pdf document and convert it to an interactive form that can also be electronically signed. When trying it out I took my health form that I have band students who will be traveling use, converted it from a word document to a pdf then uploaded it. Then I did a trial run of just doing a one-time fill out, and also having the option to invite others to use it (I invited myself so that I could test it out). This should help to greatly cut down the number of extra forms that I have to print out and give to students because they have lost theirs. However it does to a certain extent take away from students learning to be responsible for themselves. If I can just email this form to a parent or guardian and bypass the students then they have taken no responsibility for themselves and making sure all the necessary paperwork that allows them to travel with us is turned in. On the plus side I could spend considerably less time in class saying “Suzy do you have your forms, Jonny do you have your forms, Betty do you have your forms…”. While there are no direct academic gains that will be created by using this form it has the potential to give me 3-4 minutes of extra time not spent collecting and asking for forms. When spread over the first three weeks of school this has the potential to save 15-20 minuets per week and 45-60 total. What teacher would not love to gain 60 extra minutes of instructional time!
In addition to my form that I have created this could be used for all types of homework assignments where you hope to be able to read you students answers to specific questions. You could use this site for many different applications with in a classroom or school setting and since it is free that makes it even better.
Below is a screen shot of the form I created and what it looks like after entering information into several fields.
I agree your time needs to be spent on content not on asking students for forms. What a great tool to get the legal work to you in a timely manner:) Good job, Abby
ReplyDeleteWOW...ABBY, I WILL HAVE TO TRY THIS TOOL. PDF'S CAN BE SOMEWHAT CUMBERSOME. THIS LOOKS REALLY SIMPLE AND EASY TO USE. I WILL COMMENT MORE ONCE I HAVE CHECKED IT OUT.
ReplyDeleteThis is great Abby!
ReplyDeleteAnything to get you some more time in the classroom for instruction is worth doing! Use your class time for instruction and place the responsibility on parents for them to provide permission for students to go on field trips. As you said, turning in a form does not really have any academic value so have the parents take care of it.
I will certainly use this for my lacrosse team for collecting liability release forms prior to our season starting.
Thank you for finding this one.
Fantastic website! Practical teaching tools are the best! I will definitely use this site for forms. Unfortunately, I will still have to print forms for the families that do not currently have the Internet. I look forward to the day that fast paced broadband is available to all citizens in our country.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great idea for student who are also absent from school or at the end of a quarter when a students don't have all of his work in. You can explain that it could have been accessed on the "website'. Thank you this is a good one;)
ReplyDeleteThis is fantastic! I use Adobe Acrobat Pro to make PDF forms and as a result, my organization lines up to have me convert forms for online use. Now, I can tell them to "do it yourself!" :o)
ReplyDeleteI plan to explore this tool tomorrow... with all these Web 2.0 tools, why do we still have to go work? Can't we work from home via the web? I project (I'm a futuristic thinker), it will take about 5-7 years for my suggestion to really come full circle... I can't wait!
Thanks Abby - I love this tool!
It is nice that you found this tool very useful. Converting a document file to a pdf file using a traditional scanner after you created it from Word document can create a big file in megabytes, which can eat a lot of space when you send it by email. Yahoo has a 10MB limit but I think Google mail has a bigger capacity. But anyway the usefulness of this Web 2.0 tool comes handy when you do not have an Adobe Acrobat Pro from your school’s computer.
ReplyDeleteI will definitely use this fillanypdf tool in some of my documents when my Mac Pro is not around.