Getting into Google Apps Script for EDU
On Totally Unscripted, a regular live stream show dedicated to Google Apps Script, I got to be the guest this week along with Dave Abouav. The focus this episode is the impact of Apps Scripting in education.
Things that never get old is having a chance to talk to THE Dave Abouav who coded Flubaroo, the Google Forms quiz grading Add-on. Before Google Forms developed quizzing features into the product Dave was helping teachers save thousands of hours grading. I will tell you, I think Dave did it better. I prefer the quiz grading features of Flubaroo to the quiz features in Google Forms. Install Flubaroo here.
Apps Script and Education
Apps Script is a low barrier entry coding language that allows you to modify Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and more. I code all the time!! As teachers we have 30+ reasons in front of us every day to code. Anything repetitive should be automated! Have you ever tried to add sheets to a spreadsheet? How about one per student in your class? It’s not only tedious to add a bunch of sheets to a spreadsheet but to type the name of each student… My Add-on TemplateTab
Custom Solutions
It would be nice if there was at least one person at every school who could code Google Apps Script. Many solutions are unique to the school environment and specifically to what your particular school is doing. At my school we needed a Google Form for a list of 80+ students but all the responses to come into the same spreadsheet and then daily email out a reminder to fill out the Form. This is so specific! I was able to code this to work exactly how the school needed it rather than trying to hack something together that wasn’t intended for this purpose.
If you’re interested in learning more I do offer coding workshops and support with my premium membership.
Authorization Screen
When coding any application in Google Apps Script the script has to be authorized. For my First Slide application to allow you to push and pull slides from Google Slides it is not an authorized Add-on. What does this mean? It means I never submitted it to Google and you will need to get past the authorization screen that acknowledges that I have never submitted it to Google. That is all it is telling you, no one at Google has reviewed the code… because I did not ask them to.
NONE of my Add-ons collect any user data.
Do NOT Click Back to Safety
If you do not know the developer of the unauthorized script you should not authorize it. However, if you do know who coded it (ME!) the warning is just letting you know that Google has not reviewed the code and is not vouching for me.
You are authorizing YOURSELF access
Notice it says the developer is YOU! You made a copy of my Add-on and you are now authorizing access to yourself to your own Google files.
Try It
I have some tutorials to get you started.
