Do you Doctopus?

I'm glad to be linking up with Tasia again this month for the the Tech Talk blog hop.

Last spring when I first became a 1:1 teacher I needed to quickly find a way to manage and keep track of all of the assignments that we were working on in our Google Drive.

That is when I found the answer to managing everything in the Google add-on, Doctopus! Doctopus along with the Chrome add-on, Goobric, made my life much more manageable and honestly, I couldn't have managed as a 1:1 in third grade last year without them.

This year with the introduction of the Google Classroom I have been using the Classroom as a means to disseminate and collect assignments. I had to give up the use of Doctopus and Goobric until recently as they are now Google Classroom add-ins as well. I am super excited about this! If you haven't used either of these add-ins before then wait until you find out just what they can do in and out of the Classroom.

Doctopus
Let's talk Doctopus! This add-on is unique and a hidden friend for teachers. If you choose not to use Google Classroom you will need to open a new spreadsheet in your Google Drive and add/launch the Doctopus add-on. Label the spreadsheet "class master" or something similar that you will remember to not alter in the future unless you drop or add a student.

You will then use Doctopus and build a new roster. If you are not using Google Classroom you will need to launch Doctopus and then select "build a roster" or "ingest from gClassFolder" from the "select method" drop down menu. At this point you will need to either ingest from gClassFolders or add your student information (names and emails) to build your class roster. You may also import from Teacher Dashboard if you are a Hapara's Teacher Dashboard user.

Once the roster is built you are ready to go. Whichever method you use, you will have folders for each class, once you have the folders for classes you may disseminate assignments through Doctopus via the Drive by starting a new spreadsheet with the assignment name, launching Doctopus and following directions for sending out the assignment you have in your Drive that you wish to create individual student copies of, and then Doctopus will send the assignments to the students' Drive in the folders that were created by Doctopus when you created your roster or folders.

The cool thing about this is that you will be able to see student work while they are working on the assignments. You will be able to comment, edit, and view student work in real time. Later you will be able to use Goobric, if you wish to attach a rubric to your assignment (it is one option - I will discuss this later in this post). It's like magic! 

 Wait, though! There is a way to use in conjunction with the Google Classroom too! 

Doctopus now works in the Google Classroom as well!!!! (Do you get a sense of my excitement over this?) While the Classroom creates folders and you can see student work in the folder in real time, and it creates a .csv file you can download with grades once you have graded all work there wasn't a way to warehouse both of these features along with comments all in one place in the Classroom the way it is designed. Using Doctopus allows you to have your grades self-populate in the spreadsheet, comments can be added there as well, and there are links to all student work once, as well as if the work was turned in or not. 

If you are using Doctopus with the Google Classroom you will need to select "Ingest Google" for creating your roster and then it will ask you to select the class and the assignment you want Doctopus to populate the spreadsheet for. 

What I found is the only students who will show up in the spreadsheet are those who have opened the assignment in the classroom (even if it is an assignment where students will be adding or creating the attachment themselves). I have also found that unless you had them open the assignments and created the spread sheet before the due date you will not see students who have turned their work in late. I discovered this as I was using older assignments to play around with when I first incorporated Doctopus into my management system for my Google Classroom assignments. 

Once Doctopus populates the spread sheet it will create the following column headings: 

First Name, Last Name, Email, Student Folder, Exclude, File Key, File Name, Link, Turned in Status, Last Edited, Grade, & Written Feedback

Here is a sample of what the spread sheet will look like with the file names, links, turned in status, and last edited columns populated. (Note that there are not grades as this was an old assignment and I just wanted to see what would happen with Doctopus in the Classroom, hence there are no grades or comments.)

While I love the ability to add grades directly to the Google Classroom I hate the fact that you either have to have the Classroom open while you are grading assignments in the Classroom Folder for the assignment in your Drive, or you have to open and close each assignment in the Classroom. By incorporating Doctopus into my Google Classroom management and grading system I am able to add comments or grades in one place as I move in and out of student documents.

Using Doctopus you can Attach Goobric or send feedback to students via email (see below). Through Doctopus you can also refresh for recent edits and look for new student submissions. I like this feature too, because you don't have to scroll through your Classroom feed to find the assignment in question in order to see if there have been more submissions and to grade what has been turned in.

WOO-HOO! I Just LOVE Doctopus!

But wait! There is even more to add to this!

Goobric! Goobric is a Chrome add-on and it allows you to add a rubric you have created in Google Sheets to a Google Document (it doesn't currently work on other platforms that may have been turned in via the Drive or Classroom). You generate a rubric in Sheets and attach it to an assignment via Doctopus. After authorizing Goobric, each assignment you open will have the rubric open, you simply grade the documents, add comments if you wish to and then save. Once you save the rubric Goobric will email the document with the rubric to the student and it will populate the grades to your spreadsheet as well as retaining the rubric on the copy of the document that you see via the link in your spreadsheet. VERY COOL!

If you want to see them in action check out this Youtube video: Doctopus + Classroom + Goobric = :) by Jennifer Magiera.

You may have noticed the 1:1 teacher blog button in the right hand sidebar. I really wanted a button to indicate that I am a teacher in a 1:1 classroom and couldn't find one anywhere so I took matters in my own hands and created one (see previous post for more details). I have created a link up and I hope that if you are, or know someone who is, a 1:1 classroom teacher you will link up or pass this link on to others.

As always, I hope that this was helpful information for you, and thanks for stopping by!