Trying to do "More Google" stuff... #GoogleEdu #teachertools

This summer, I received my Google Certified Educator level 1 certification. As I am working on level 2 now, I am trying to incorporate more "Google things" into my curriculum, either for students or as tools for myself. I saw the other day where someone used a Google Form to collect student submissions for online work (genius!); they post their email, name, URL of project, and comments or a reflection, whatever you need into a simple Google Form so the teacher doesn't have to check emails or have them write down the info.

My students had already uploaded work for grading to SchoolTube, an online video hosting site, in my Multimedia class. And, I was in the middle of moderating their submissions when I wondered if I could just enter their scores and feedback on a Google Sheet and maybe somehow email that information to them. Ideally, I would have had them do the hard work for me and enter in a form, but it was too late for that, so I just typed in their names, plugged in their student emails (only 20 kids so I looked them up quickly), put a Score column and a Notes column and graded away. Then, I hoped I'd find a solution.

I've used Flubaroo before, but I couldn't easily figure out how to mail my score and notes through that. And, after tweeting to Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler), a Google guru, I figured I'd take her advice and try Yet Another Mail Merge, another Google plug-in. Mind you, I don't really read instructions much, so I went poking away trying to figure it out.

My thoughts:

First, get into Gmail and type an email that has "mostly" what you want to say. Mine wasn't fancy. I put the assignment name and a box that said Score and Notes/Feedback. Then, I put my name and a smiley.  I didn't send the email from Gmail; it was just a "draft" in my Gmail.  Oh, and you had to put those double chevrons on either side of the "field names" from your Google Sheet. So, I put <<Score>> and <<Notes>> on there where I needed that information merged (like a Word mail merge, mostly). Fortunately, I picked a YAMM template and modified it and it had a note about that. Score.

Second, I went back to the other tab where my Google Sheet was and added the add-in for this mail merge thingy. It popped up and I had to allow some stuff. Then, it was pretty self-explanatory. I picked my "draft" from the list and put the return email and such. I added myself to the spreadsheet before I did this so I could see what the email would look like.

Here is what my students received (of course, mine is perfect, but they had much more detailed feedback on what was missing or needed improvement):

This worked great! Next time, I'll have them enter their info so I don't have to do all the work (or maybe I'll just duplicate this Sheet and use it again). You are limited to 100 emails per day on this YAMM plug-in, but I have so many different classes I teach that none of my classes are more than 50 kids, so as long as I only do one class in a day, I'm good.

I have student portfolios for another class where they submit work, so this might be another easy way to collect direct URLs for those and to easily grade those projects. I know there are other plug-ins that are rubric based, so maybe that will be my next challenge.

Anyway, hope this helps someone! :)