One of my favorite class activities is to have students all contribute to the same Google Sheets spreadsheet. Each student can have their own tab in the spreadsheet. This gives me one document to access and assess. It allows me, and classmates, to view the work of other students for the purpose of peer evaluation and collaboration.
If you want to assign students to a particular tab you would need to type each students name into the tabs individually. In order to help solve this tedious task I have written a Google Apps Script that will create a tab for each student on your roster.
Go to https://alicekeeler.com/rostertab
to make a copy of the template.
On the first sheet paste the roster of your students into column A. Each item in column A will generate a new tab with that same name. Make sure each name is unique. If you have two students with the name “Jose” in your class be sure to include a last initial or something to make each name unique. Two tabs can not be named the same.
If you have additional names you need to add after you have already ran the RosterTab script, DELETE the names that already have a tab. You can NOT have blank cells. Make sure the new list of names starts in cell A2.
Spreadsheets do not allow for two tabs to have the same name. If two names in your list are identical the script will append the name with the position of the student in the roster. For example if alice is 1st on the list and 7th on the list the first tab will say “alice” and the 7th tab will say “alice 7.”
Using the Spreadsheet
Suggestion to download a roster of your students names from your gradebook or from Google Classroom. This will avoid the need to type each students name into the spreadsheet.
Once the tabs are created you can delete the roster tab or can utilize the roster list for record keeping purposes.
This script can also be used for non roster ideas. If you have any list that you would like to convert to tabs this script will work. For example take a list of research topics and run the script to create a tab for each research topic. Have students crowd source information they locate on the different topics. If you want to provide each student with a graphic organizer to fill out on the tab try TemplateTab.