Text Expander in Comments for Chrome OS

Grading papers online can be a tedious task, writing the same comments over and over again.

That, or you could resort to abbreviations like sva, trans, pro#, and provide them easy-to-access resources for students to look your hieroglyphics up... only for them to ask you each time what SP stands for.

Text expanders aren't anything new, but they can save time and make it easier to leave qualitative comments. Services like turnitin.com have a handy panel with buttons for commonly used comments, but that costs money, and for those of us immersed in Google Drive, it's another platform for students to worry about.

The problem is, there are no reliable expanders to use in comments in Google Docs in Chrome OS. As of writing, none of the available Chrome extensions or apps work in this context.

Google Docs does have a text substitution feature under Tools - Preferences, but they don't work in comments. I've looked into creating a script (especially enticing possibilities with panels), but as far as my novice eyes can see, you can't programmatically insert text into comments.

Until something changes, that means I'm stuck using either Windows or Mac to grade papers, since my Chromebook is my only mobile workstation now.

This post is clearly me procrastinating from grading said papers on my work Windows desktop, so let me redeem this a little.

For Windows, I use Texter - it's a small free app. The bonus is you can install it on a flash drive, making it sorta mobile if you jump between Windows computers.

For Mac, I use Text Expander - it has a nice free trial.

For you English teachers out there, here's a list of my Texter pre-fab grammar comments - each has a URL to the corresponding help documentation on Purdue's Online Writing Lab so that students can read up on subject-verb agreement errors, parallelism, etc.

To use it, install and open Texter, and in the menu, click Bundles - Import and locate the Grammar.texter file

If anyone wants the Mac Text Expander file for grammar, let me know.

But +Google Drive and +Google in Education folks- can you pretty please allow text substitution in comments... or even better, allow programmatic insertion of pre-formatted comments? Thank you!

How did I miss that? Another script update

It's amazing the problems I'm finding in live use of the scripts versus my "test phase" use.

Anyway, all three updated scripts should be available in the Apps Gallery in a few days. Specific changes are noted in the changelog in the script documentation (available from the menu up top).

I really did mean to blog more consistently this year, and not just to update on my scripts, but the beginning of the school year has been an unceasingly busy one.

Scripts are available in Gallery!

... well, sort of.

Master Roster (the utility script that feeds a student roster to my other two scripts) should still be online.

But after the other two scripts were available online, I found bugs in both the Online Rubric and Grade Sheet Creator (see the details in each script's documentation, available from the menu above).

I just resubmitted them with fixes, so hopefully they should be available again with 24 hours. If you find another bug or unintentional "feature", let me know and I'll squish them as soon as I'm able.

In other news, it really is amazing I missed these two bugs in the countless tests I put them through.

#education #googleappsscript #Google #googledrive #tools #javascript #rubric, 

Happy Scripting Summer

I'm teaching myself how to code.

Specifically, Javascript in the Google Apps Script environment. 

I don't suppose this helps reduce my nerdiness quotient much. But it helped pass the time during the last few weeks of the school year, and now, in the first few days of summer, I'm finishing up my first script.

It'd be a huge stretch to call it "original," as it's largely based on Andrew Stillman's Doctopus script, which is an awesome tool. In a nutshell, it creates assignments on Google Docs and shares it with students, whether individually or in groups.

It solves the problem of students forgetting to share assignments with you, or leaving their document named "Untitled Document." It also allows you to "embargo" the documents, preventing students from editing the documents while you grade, and it allows you to send their grade via personalized email.

And combined with the Goobric (a more nuanced rubric) extension and gClass Folders, it creates a robust Google Drive classroom solution.

However, I found myself wanting an online rubric without having to create documents for the students. For example, if they posted a video or comic strip on Google+ as an assignment (more on those in a future post), I needed a rubric independent of the Doctopus solution.

So I created Online Rubric (cool name, I know). While I'm going to put it through some beta testing before publishing it to the gallery, it allows you to create an independent holistic or itemized rubric and send it to students. As I mentioned, it's largely a derivation of Doctopus, but I figured it was a good way to get my feet wet.

I'll be posting documentation for Online Rubric here as soon as it's public.

In the meanwhile, I'm thinking of future script projects, so if anyone who chances to read this has a problem of practice on Google Drive for me, let me know.

#rubric #GoogleDrive #GoogleAppsScript #javascript #education #goobric #doctopus #gclassfolders

Location-based Narratives

Assignment: Research your neighborhood and pair that research with a short, personal narrative, imitating Alex Kotlowitz's style in There Are No Children Here.

The research and narrative will then be posted to a custom map using Google Maps Engine Lite.

Recap: Because of the unpredictability of our end-of-year schedule, I was forced to shorten this assignment. The original assignment involved a little more research, and I would have likely extended the word count and quality of their narratives.

However, the assignment proved to be a success in terms of educating students about their neighborhoods (I was surprised to see the number of kids who didn't know anything about where they lived), and in seeing how many of Kotlowitz's chapters were set up. Thematically, the students were able to add their own voices to the Chicago narrative dominating the media.

They told stories of violence, blight, and destruction, but they also told tales of friendship, love, and trust.

Creating a custom map is a straightforward process. You work in layers (you can see my 6th period "layer" in the picture), and are limited to 100 (I think?) locations in the non-commercial version.

However, Maps Engine (essentially a refresh of the custom maps Google has offered for years) does not allow rich text formatting, HTML, and embedding in the balloons that pop up when clicking on a placemark.

I would love to be able to embed videos or Google documents directly in the map... or at the very least, format text. I resorted to having students post a public Google Doc share link.

I'm hoping to explore more uses of this tool next year, including overlaying images and studying their neighborhood in a little more depth.

Let me know what you think, or if you have other ideas...

#Google #GoogleMaps #GoogleMapsEngine #education #Kotlowitz #Chicago #ThereAreNoChildrenHere #GoogleDrive #narratives #story

Backing up the Cloud

Rather than an introductory post, I'll jump right in with a tip/tool, which will likely dominate the majority of my posts (at least initially).

If you're like me, almost all of your work is in the Cloud. And while I regularly back up my computers, I've neglected to do so with my files on Google Drive.

 © 2006-2013 Pink Sherbet Photography

This is problematic for me as I use a school-specific Google Apps Drive account. If, for whatever reason, I were to lose access to that account, I'd lose access to several years' worth of work.

As such, I've starred the steps below that pertain to my (and my department's) situation. Feel free to ignore those otherwise.

Solution: http://mover.io

Mover allows you to transfer files from one cloud service to another. It's easy.

What you need:
Two cloud accounts (in my case, Google Drive and Dropbox)

1. Create a mover.io account

* 2. Use your personal gmail/email account for the account

* 3. From gmail, sign into your Apps account (see https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1721977?hl=en for help on that)

4. From mover.io, click on Add New Source and click Google Drive

* 5. You'll be prompted to choose your Google account. Choose your apps account, not your personal. Label it accordingly.

6. Click on Add New Destination, and link up your Dropbox account (or whatever service you're backing up to)

7. If you're transferring files solely for backup purposes, click on the Archive checkbox in the middle. It will zip EVERYTHING you have, preserving folder structure

8. Then click on Transfer Now. It'll take awhile if you're transferring a large number of files, so make sure you're on a good connection.

9. Mover will send you an email when everything is ready, along with a log file of any errors.

Note: This was originally posted on a soon-to-be-defunct Google+ page. More on that later.


#googledrive   #moverio   #education   #cloud  #backup  
+Mover