Faster Google Classroom Assignments with a Bookmarklet
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash.
If you're a teacher and manage a Google Classroom, you probably have daily or weekly routines for adding assignments. If you frequently assign work to a subset of your students, like "Advanced Readers" or "Group Two", here's a free tool that can streamline your work and avoid repetitive tasks.
I wrote this tool for my wife to use during Distance Learning, and hope it will benefit other teachers too.
Browser Bookmarklets
Most browsers support "bookmarklets" as a lightweight way to script interactions with a webpage. You're probably familiar with "bookmarks" as a means to save a webpage address so you can find it later. Bookmarklets live alongside your bookmarks, but instead of navigating you to a saved address, a bookmarklet can perform actions on the current page.
A bookmarklet is like a simple kind of browser extension.
Automating Assignees
I've created a free bookmarklet to streamline two scenarios:
- Assigning work to only a specified list of students.
- Assigning work to all students except a specified list.
For example, assigning an advanced math homework or a differentiated language assignment.
Let's say you have a group of five students – Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma, and Daphne – that you sometimes assign work to. Your current workflow is something like:
- Look up which students are in the group.
- Open the drop-down list of assignees.
- Uncheck "All students".
- Check each of the five students.
- Close the assignees list.
Use the bookmarklet generator to create a bookmarklet that automates these repetitive clicks. Your new workflow is as simple as:
- Click the "Mystery Incorporated" bookmarklet.
If you have multiple groups, you can easily create a bookmarklet for each one.
Troubleshooting
If you see an error message when you run the bookmarklet, follow these steps:
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Read the error message and look for troubleshooting tips. If you need to edit student names, open the bookmarklet generator and run your bookmarklet.
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Changes to the Google Classroom interface may inadvertently break the bookmarklet. Open the bookmarklet generator and run your bookmarklet(s) to check for updates.
If all else fails, leave a comment below describing the issue and the error message you receive. I will assist as time allows.