Faster Google Classroom Assignments with a Bookmarklet

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:

1. Look up which students are in the group.
2. Open the drop-down list of assignees.
3. Uncheck "All students".
4. Check each of the five students.
5. Close the assignees list.

Use the bookmarklet generator to create a bookmarklet that automates these repetitive clicks. Your new workflow is as simple as:

1. 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:

• Read the error message and look for troubleshooting tips. If you need to edit student names, open the bookmarklet generator and run your bookmarklet.

  

• 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.