Last week at Fall CUE, I listened to Alice Keeler‘s session on mail merge in google docs. I love mail merge using Pages & Numbers, and I love Google Docs, so I was naturally stoked to hear about combining these two ecosystems. She walked us through adding a script (Another Mail Merge) to a spreadsheet, and using it to send a customized email. My mind was blown, and I have been thinking non-stop about how to incorporate this into my classroom. (If you don’t know about this workflow, take a moment and read her post on it. You mind will be blown, and you’ll need to understand it before my post makes sense.)
In my EDUC 448 course, Math for Young Children, my students shared a book that incorporates math, but isn’t an obvious math book. They were sharing great resources, but nobody was writing down the information! That was a problem.
Later in class, they visited four centers with activities supporting the evening’s content area. At one center, I had them fill out this google spreadsheet. I walked them through adding the script, and showed them the email draft that the script uses (Hi $%Name%, Thanks for sharing $%Book Title%. Here is the link to everyone’s books: http://amzn.to/XikOD6). Then, I ran the mail merge in class, and each student received a personalized email that looked something like this:
Hi Katy,
Thanks for sharing Knuffle Bunny.
Here is the link to everyone’s books:
http://amzn.to/XikOD6
Bill
Now, you may be wondering how I got that super cool list of everyone’s books on Amazon. Here’s the quick, tangential answer: I copied the ISBNs from the spreadsheet, pasted it into the Amazon advanced book search, added a pipe “|” (above the return key & below the delete key) between each ISBN, and Amazon returns a search with every book on one page.
So, in class, I emailed each student a thank you for sharing their book, and gave them a link to everyone’s eduawesome math literature book. I’m beginning to see just how powerful google docs scripts are. If you have any suggestions for this workflow, please tweet at me or comment below. If not, I hope this gives you some ideas on how to use scripts in google docs.
