Curriculum Vibes

Yes, for every teacher and school. Each app runs in your own Google account, so there is no subscription and nothing to pay. AI feedback is optional and uses your own Gemini key if you turn it on.

A Google Workspace for Education account (the kind your school gives you). Students sign in with their school Google accounts. It works on Chromebooks, laptops, tablets and phones.

About five minutes, once per app: make a copy, click Classroom App ▸ Set up my app, publish, and paste your student link. After that, students just open the link. The setup guide shows every screen, with a 1½-minute video of the whole thing.

Yes. Google says that about any app it hasn’t reviewed itself, and your copy is a brand-new app that only you own. Many school accounts never see it; personal Gmail accounts usually do. If you do, it’s once, during setup; your students never see it.

Public-domain texts are, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth and several classic short stories. For books still under copyright, students use their own copies; the apps never include that text, and some leave a space where you can paste in your own.

Each app is a Google Apps Script web app with a Google Sheet as its database. It runs as you, inside your Google account, and students sign in with their school accounts, so there are no extra servers, passwords or rosters to manage. Your copy’s Sheet holds every class, student and piece of work, and you can open it any time.

Into your copy’s Google Sheet, in your Drive. Nobody else can see it, including the person who made the app. Nothing is sent anywhere else unless you connect Canvas or turn on AI feedback.

Writing saves itself a few seconds after a student stops typing, and a copy stays in the browser until the save is confirmed. Two tabs or two devices can’t overwrite each other: the older one is asked which version to keep, and the other is backed up. Submit can’t be sent twice, and earlier versions are kept as backups. When you open a student’s page as the teacher, you can read it but not change it.

To keep work in your Sheet (Google Sheets), to make files it exports (Google Drive, only the files it creates), to know who is signed in (your email address), and to reach Canvas or AI feedback if you use them (connect to an external service). A few apps also make Google Docs or send you an email notice; they say so when you approve.

You can read it any time and fix a typo in a cell. Don’t sort, delete or move rows in the student tabs: the app finds each student’s work by its row. To remove a student or start over, use the buttons in the app.

New versions are posted here with notes on what changed. Paste the new files into your copy (Extensions ▸ Apps Script), then Deploy ▸ Manage deployments ▸ ✎ ▸ New version. Your student link stays the same, and your students’ work is never touched.

Because 7 points lines up with percentages and letter grades. Each step is about 14%, close to the 10-point gap between letter grades, and half points fill in between:7 / 7100%A6.5 / 793%A6 / 786%B5.5 / 779%C+5 / 771%C4.5 / 764%D4 / 757%below a D on most scalesOn a 4-point rubric, “meets the standard” (3 out of 4) becomes 75%, a C, and 2 out of 4 is a failing 50%. Seven points lets solid work land on a B, strong work on an A, and partial work somewhere fair.

Every graded assignment is a tile on your dashboard showing To grade · Graded · Not submitted. Open it to grade each student with the rubric on screen, or use Focused grading for one student at a time. If a student changes work after you graded it, it comes back marked ↻ to regrade. Ungraded work is left blank, never counted as a zero, and you can leave any assignment out of the grade for one student or the whole class.

Yes, if you want it to. Each teacher connects with their own Canvas access token. The app then creates the assignments in your course and pushes scores and comments with one click (in most apps, the whole gradebook at once). Work you leave out of the grade goes to Canvas as Excused, so it never counts against a student. You can also download a CSV for any gradebook that takes imports.

Yes. Make a course file: pick the app, paste your student link, and import the file into your course. You get a module for each week or unit with every graded assignment and its points, unpublished until you’re ready. In Canvas, the app’s Push finds those assignments by name and sends scores to them, so you never get a second column. The file is made in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Not yet. Today you add your student link to Canvas, Schoology or Google Classroom as a link that opens in a new tab (a course file does this for you, with every assignment), and students sign in with Google. Grades reach Canvas through Canvas’s own connection (above), not through LTI. A full LTI 1.3 connection, where the app opens inside your LMS and knows the class and student from the launch, needs your LMS administrator to register the tool and a small secure service to handle the LTI sign-in handshake, which Apps Script can’t do well on its own. Several apps already include an optional connector for that service, switched off by default. If your school or district wants LTI, email jabens@gmail.com.

No. Every app keeps its own gradebook. If you use Google Classroom or a class website, share your student link there and enter grades however you like.

Yes. As the admin, you can give other teachers access inside the app, and each one gets their own classes. Or each teacher can make their own copy.

Yes. Your copy is yours: open Extensions ▸ Apps Script and change anything. If you improve something, consider sharing it back so every teacher gets it.

Please do. Read the app standard and send it in. Every app on this site follows the same rules, so teachers can count on all of them.

Please do. The I’m using this form takes a minute: your name, your school and which apps you use. It helps decide what to build next.

Jaben Schalk teaches English in Hawaii at Hawaii Technology Academy, where he is the high-school English department head. He has been teaching for 21 years, mostly in middle and high school, and built these for his own classes and teaches them with his students. Teachers are welcome to help improve them. To get in touch, email jabens@gmail.com.

Schools and districts can use them free. Companies that want to sell or bundle them need permission first: email jabens@gmail.com.