Mac is to "Drop Box" as Windows is to...?

This morning at our faculty meeting my high school's IT/calculus teacher told our faculty about a folder he was putting on our school's server for students to put their assignments into. The problem that he described was that both teachers and students needed access to it, so he had to allow read and write permission for both groups. When I heard this, it reminded me of how I have my Music Technology class hand in their files and projects–they log into my laptop as a Guest and drop their assignments into my Drop Box. But what he described sent up security red flags in my mind–if students have read and write access into his Windows assignment folder, they can see each other's work! In my Mac OS X scenario, students cannot even see into my Drop Box, they can only drop in their assignments.

Does anyone know a viable solution for the Windows world which is similar to the Drop Box implementation on Mac OS X? (I can't believe I'm asking for Windows help on a Mac forum--I've been a Mac person since OS 7!).

Tags: box, drop, macintosh

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jack Phelps on November 29, 2007 at 8:09pm

Hi Dale--

I believe I can help. My company just released a free "educational network" for teachers that lets you create course content, share it among your peers, and add it to class websites (http://ChitCh.at). The part here that's relevant for you is how the class websites work: when you a teacher creates an assignment, students can respond online, and their responses can include file attachments. We organize the student responses into a list that makes it really easy -- easier than a drop box, I think -- to collect, grade, and give feedback on the submitted work. You (and your IT/calc teacher) should check it out; I've already got one teacher on who's using it in basically the same way. It's a really flexible system so that if all you want to use it for is to set up one post and always just have students drop their documents there, it'd be perfectly easy.

As an extra, we're giving away a free XO laptop (the One Laptop Per Child machine) to a random teacher who signs up and makes at least one post by December 7th.

My apologies if this is too commercial a message, but I do hope we can help. Check it out if you'd like, and please feel free to e-mail me at jack@chitch.at if you have questions or suggestions. If you think it's not right for you, please also let me know why!

-Jack