Google is giving away the Kitchen Sink - Will we use it?

After seeing the Scripting capabilities of Google Apps, I was sold a year ago not only on Google Apps but what could be done with the scripting capabilities.  There are many things Google is giving us in education, but this may be the kitchen sink.

Back in my March blog I mentioned the self grading quizzes that you can do using a script called Flubaroo.  While attending the NETA 2011 conference a couple weeks ago, I attended a session that was put on by an administrator in a school here in Nebraska that highlighted several ways he used Google Forms and the power of scripts for many day-to-day activities including quick walk through evaluations. Many of his forms can be found here. 

While many of Google's tools are very easy to use, that is not necessarily the case concerning writing scripts. Thank goodness for individuals who create scripts like Flubaroo and are willing to share them for others to freely use.  There are many scripts out there that are free to use and add a lot of functionality to many Google apps.  I encourage you to look at those scripts and utilize them to accomplish many tasks that you did not realize were able to be completed using many of the Google Apps.

For those of you that have some coding experience or are willing to learn.... listen up "Grasshopper", this is where you can make the Google Apps do about anything you or your district wants it to do.  Will school districts be able to find qualified individuals who have some scripting capabilities to use the sink that Google is giving away?  I hope so, but in the mean time... I am hoping to learn a little bit about this scripting myself to be able to at least modify some great scripts that other good coders are willing to give away.

Happy scripting!