Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Using Doctopus for an improved Google Drive workflow

Many teachers create documents as templates for their students to copy and then edit.  One way to do this is by sharing your document as "View Only" and asking student to make their own copy.  Another is by uploading to the Template gallery in Google Drive.  Both of these methods can be clumsy, however.  Students have to share back with you, they often don't rename the document well (lots of "Copy of _____" file names), and so on.

Doctopus is a tool (technically, a Google script) that automates the entire process.  Basically, you make a folder in Google Drive, put a document into that folder to serve as the template, put your roster into a spreadsheet, and it does the rest.  Each student ends up with his/her own copy of the document automatically and its in the folder that you specify, shared with you.
Here is a nice explanation of the process (in two parts):



I would be happy to help you get this set up if you would like to give it a try in a class.

2 comments:

  1. For e-mail subscribers, it looks like the videos in this post may not have been included. They can be viewed in the blog itself or by URL:
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  2. Charlie,

    I just tried this and I think it will be really useful. You can even grade students easily and send it to them.

    Dave

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