Flubaroo and gClassFolders: 2 Google Scripts That Will Change Your Life

Find this site at: DitchThatTextbook.com/scripts

Learn the ins and outs of two scripts that will make organizing and managing your Google Apps activities easier and faster. They include:

— Flubaroo: Use Google Forms as assessments and grade them instantly

— gClassFolders: Creates folders for students and teachers to streamline and simplify the process of sharing and storing

Some basic instruction will be followed by lots of time to set up the scripts and play with them to see how they work.

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USEFUL LINKS

Paper handout file: Click here (PDF)

Google Drive: drive.google.com — Your online hub for all of your Google Apps. If you don’t have a Google account yet (shame on you … you’re at a Google conference!), create one there!

Flubaroo/gClassFolders session backchannel: www.todaysmeet.com/scripts — Ask questions, give examples and share how you could apply this material!

20 Powerful Google Apps Uses (related) : www.ditchthattextbook.com/google — Matt’s presentation with video tutorials of how to implement each of the 20 ideas

Indiana Google Apps in Education Summit evaluation:

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ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Matt Miller (@jmattmiller) is a high school Spanish teacher at Turkey Run High School in Marshall, IN. His students engage in Spanish through educational technology regularly, including tools like blogs, digital videos and photos, QR codes, Google Voice and more. He blogs regularly at Ditch That Textbook, which is dedicated to teaching with less reliance on the textbook with an emphasis on technology and creative teaching. He can be contacted at matt@ditchthattextbook.com.

Some of Matt’s blog posts relating to Google:

Some of Matt’s most viewed blog posts:

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FLUBAROO

What it is: Flubaroo is a script that will grade assessments for you. Assessments are made in Google Forms and the student responses are saved in a spreadsheet. The Flubaroo script is installed in the spreadsheet with the results and grades the assessment for you. It creates a grade summary on a separate sheet in the spreadsheet. Students’ grades can be e-mailed to them through Flubaroo.

How it works: Check out this Flubaroo overview page from the official Flubaroo site. It gives a great step-by-step tutorial to walk you through the entire process.

Here’s my video walkthrough (part of my “20 Powerful Google Apps Uses” session):

Links for our practice:

Tips:

Add a “Name:” text field to your quizzes so you can connect each quiz result to the person who took it. (Google will collect usernames automatically if you want to avoid this step, but I always put a name field there anyway.)
Add an “E-mail address:” text field if you want to e-mail results of the quiz to your students.
Flubaroo will grade most types of questions automatically. Text fields can be graded automatically, but students would have to type it EXACTLY as it appears on the answer key you create (unless you’re a high-powered Google ninja).
Before your students take your quiz, you should take it. For simplicity later, use “ANSWER KEY” as your name. This lets you check the quiz to make sure there are no errors AND to create the answer key that Flubaroo will use to grade.
After you start the Flubaroo grading process, make sure you review all of your questions to make sure they’re identified correctly as a question that identifies the student, a question that won’t be graded, or a question that receives a certain number of points. Flubaroo tries to figure it out for you but doesn’t always get it right!

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gCLASSFOLDERS

What it is: gClassFolders creates shared folders for you and your students to help organize all of your files. It creates several new folders:

an “Edit” folder, where any file can be edited by members of the class;
a “View” folder, where any file can only be viewed by members of the class (and not edited);
a set of “Assignment Folders” — one for each student — that only the student and the teacher can access; and
the super-secret “Teacher” folder, where you can store your super-secret teacher files 🙂

How it works: Check out this gClassFolders instructions page from the official gClassFolders site. It gives a great step-by-step tutorial to walk you through the entire process.

Here’s my video walkthrough (part of my “20 Powerful Google Apps Uses” session):

Links for practice:

Our set-up spreadsheet — (Note: You can create a new spreadsheet and install the gClassFolders script (Select “Tools > Script gallery …” from the menu and search for gClassFolders) to get a spreadsheet like this one.)
Some Gmail accounts I created that we’ll use as “example student accounts” —
— gafestudent1@gmail.com (Password: GoogleApps123)
— gafestudent2@gmail.com (Password: GoogleApps123)
— gafestudent5@gmail.com (Password: GoogleApps123)
— gafestudent6@gmail.com (Password: GoogleApps123)

Tips:

When you first create the student accounts, as you watch them being created in the spreadsheet, don’t worry if it looks like the script has stopped working. It usually is still working … just be patient! It can take a while, especially if you have a lot of students (my 80 or so students took about a half hour to create, I think).
Once student folders are created, have your students log in to their Google Drives and create a folder for your class (if they haven’t already). Then they can click “Shared with me” and drag their three new gClassFolders into that new folder they created for easy access.
Use the assignment folders for files your students create individually that they want to turn in to you.
Use the edit folder for files you want everyone in the class to work on together.
Use the view folder for files you want everyone to be able to see but not be able to change (i.e. assignment sheets, study guides, etc.).