Five Ways to Turn Up the Power of Google Sheets

Google Sheets can be much more than a simple spreadsheet application. Turn up the power of Sheets with these five add-on's!

Flubaroo

Attched to a Google Sheet, Flubaroo is a powerful grading tool. Not only can it grade assignments that in a Google Sheet, but if you have the student email, you can return their grades to their shared folder.  Using one of my favorite application in Pear Deck?  You can send your Pear Deck results to a Google Sheet and use Flubaroo to grade them.

Doctopus

Doctopus is a great way to distribute classroom assignments in a paperless classroom. Students simply look in their "Shared With Me" folder for their assignment. The thing that's great about Doctopus (of which Google Classroom recently added) is that it provides a way to differntiate assignments among the students in your class. Want student "A" to do all of the questions on the worksheet while student "B" should only do half of them, it's easy to send out separate assignments. Once the due date for the assignment has arrived, you can "ingest" the assignment for grading and return the digital copy.

Goobric

Goobric takes that rubric you have on a Google Sheet and attaches it to student work for easy grading. It works hand in hand with Doctopus. Once you've got the student work in Doctopus, attach the Goobric, grade and return--it's really easy to do and makes grading simple.

Rostersync

Rostersync is heaven sent for those that are typing rosters into a spreadsheat to use for different applications such as grading apps. It works in conjunction with Google Classroom in that it pulls your roster from Classroom or vice versa sending a roster from your spreadsheet to Google Classroom. It works great when you want to set up a class with Doctopus.

Autocrat 

Autocrat is a document merge app that takes information you have on a spreadsheet and moves it to a Google Doc or PDF. For example, you've asked the students to sign in using Google Forms when attending an after school study session because want to give the students a certificate of participation. The Google Form is connected to a Google Sheet for easy reference. You can take the information on the Google Sheet and create certificates of participation using Autocrat. It's also great for use at staff meetings. The staff signs in through a Google Form that's tied to a Google Sheet. Use Autocrat to create a certificate of attendance.

Five Ways Teachers Can Use Google Forms For Classroom Administrative Tasks

There are a number of ways a teacher can incorporate Google Forms into their lesson plans. But what about the administrative side of teaching?  We know that there are many classroom administrative tasks that teachers do in order to keep their classroom running like a well oiled machine.  Here are five ways Google Forms can help with some of those administrative tasks.

1. Sign out form.

If you keep a sign out sheet for when students leave the classroom, Google Forms is a great way to keep it paperless!  Simply create a form with pertinent information such as name, period, reason, leave time.  Link the form to a Google Sheet and you've got a record of students that leave the classroom.

2. Contact form.

This is a great way to keep all of the times students and/or parents have been in contact organized.  Create a Contact Form with such information as parent or student name, best contact email, and reason for contact.  Imbed the form in your website (especially easy to do if your using the new Google Sites) in your Google Classroom site.

3. Discipline referral.

A reality of teaching is that sometimes students need to be referred to the administration or discipline office.  A Google Form can easily help with the appropriate referral form.  Simply create the form with the relevant information that your school needs.  Then, on the occasion that it becomes necessary to use, you can simply and quickly fill out the form.  You can print it, email it, or share it with the appropriate person.  This is also great for keeping track of discipline referrals when linked to a Google Spreadsheet.

4. Teacher lesson plans.

Another way to stay organized with your lesson plans.  You can create drop down menu's for grade level and standards.  Use text areas for your objectives and other relevant information.  Link to Google Sheets to keep all of your lesson plans quickly accessible and organized.  If needed, you can quickly email the spreadsheet to an administrator.

5. Material check out.

There are times when a student wants to borrow a book or some other classroom item.  Instead of trying to remember or jotting it down on a piece of paper (which you'll lose), set up a check out form.  You can easily refer to the attached spreadsheet to see who has what item.