Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Doctopus to Manage Students' Google Docs

This past weekend, educators from across California (and beyond!) gathered for FallCUE 2013 at American Canyon High School near Napa, California.  We had the opportunity to present a session on blogging and were pleased to meet so many teachers interested in both professional and classroom blogging.

We had the opportunity to attend the sessions of other educators, and picked up a number of effective strategies in integrating technology in the classroom.  One tool I heard glowing reports about was Doctopus – a solution designed to manage the workflow of students’ Google documents and presentations.

Doctopus is a Google script that allows teachers to pre-generate and share template documents.  They can then manage grading and provide feedback to individual students or groups via email.  Teachers simply use a Google Spreadsheet to upload the student information, connect to the Doctopus script and set up the sharing.

Here is a great video by teacher Katie Grassel on how to use Doctopus.


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Doctopus seems like a viable alternative to Hapara. Doctopus is free (Hapara is currently $4 per student), and although it may not have all the capabilities of Hapara, those who use it claim they can’t live without it!

1 comment:

Bob said...

Doctopus is awesome. I, too, was at the Fall Cue. The innovative presenters were inspiring and the networking opportunities get better and better. Thank you for sharing.