Over the past few years we've seen lots of Apps Script adoption within the EDU
community. Educators need lightweight systems that integrate with the Google
Apps they already use. Empowered by a cloud-hosted and simple to use platform,
non-programmers have been able to create powerful scripts that have a real
impact on the lives of their students. In honor of World Teachers' Day we're
highlighting some popular scripts educators have created and other materials
teachers can use to get started.
Earlier this year we sat down with Andrew Stillman, Program Officer for Digital
Instruction at New Visions for Public Schools and
co-founder of youpd.org. We discussed about how he uses
Apps Script to build solutions for the New York City school system. He's the
author of many popular scripts in the Script Gallery, including
formMule,
doctopus,
and autocrat, which he uses to create powerful
systems that tie together Google Forms, Spreadsheets, Docs and GMail in a way
that teachers and administrators can maintain and enhance.
Flubaroo is another popular script among teachers,
as it extends the usability of Google Forms for online assignments. After
students have submitted their responses this script scores their answers against
an answer key, generates histograms of the class's performance, and sends out
personalized emails to each student with their grades.
Even more exciting, however, is that teachers have been writing their own
scripts to solve problems and make their lives easier. For example, Adelphi
University professor Lee Stemkoski wrote a small
script that he
uses to populate a Google Calendar with the topics for each lecture he'll give
during the semester. In just 30 lines of code he was able to complete a long,
monotonous task with the click of a button.
Teachers looking to get a better idea of how Apps Script works and what it can
be used for should watch our video Google Apps EDU Fireside Chat: An
Introduction to Apps Script. In it
we cover the basic functionality and use cases supported, and even do some live
coding to show how easy it is to get started. More than 20
million
students, faculty and staff worldwide use Google Apps for Education, so if you
build something interesting and worth sharing, consider
publishing
to the Chrome Web Store.
Eric Koleda profile
Eric is a Developer Programs Engineer based in NYC on the Google Apps Script team. He's previously worked with the AdWords API and enterprise content management software.
