For Connected Educators Month, I decided to connect with some educators... through Google Hangouts. I reached out to some folks who I believe are making positive change in the world of teaching and learning and asked them to join me for a quick video chat to learn more about how they got started, what drives them and what the future holds. The first in this series is Andrew Stillman, the godfather of edu-scripts.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Scripts, now being ported over to “Add-Ons”, they are simple tools that run behind Google Apps to make your life easier and more automagical. One of the most popular of these is Doctopus, a handy Google spreadsheet add-on that virtually copies and distributes assignments through Google Drive (and much, much more). Doctopus, along with an entire menagerie of whimsically-named scripts and add-ons, comes from the intriguing mind of Andrew Stillman.
In this interview, we learn about how Andrew got started with scripting, the origin story of Doctopus (a funny anecdote with a Dan Callahan cameo), how his organization supports his work, and some of his hopes for the future of this endeavor.
You can find more of Andrew and his teams’ work at their Cloud Lab site.