Digital Dropbox - too many clicks
All of my students have tablet pcs. In an effort to go paperless, I am looking for a digital dropbox that is less time consuming than the ones that I've tried so far. I use Edmodo with course management success, but find the dropbox for assignments requires me to save the student document to my computer to grade/feedback and be able to send the document back to the student for review. This becomes problematic when you have 120 students and you do this with EVERY assignment. We also have Gaggle for student email that has a dropbox, but the same number of steps are required.
Is this just the nature of the beast ... for me to give feedback/grade (i.e. make changes) to a document I have to first save it to my computer?
Has anyone found an efficient way? I've wondered about collaborative spaces, but I didn't know what control I would have from students going in and getting someone's completed assignment before they had completed their own ... ideas anyone?
Is this just the nature of the beast ... for me to give feedback/grade (i.e. make changes) to a document I have to first save it to my computer?
Has anyone found an efficient way? I've wondered about collaborative spaces, but I didn't know what control I would have from students going in and getting someone's completed assignment before they had completed their own ... ideas anyone?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Wylie on
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I would guess people here would recommend Google Apps. I have not used it much myself but it does allow some privacy features for who can edit and view a file. Maybe that would solve your control problem.
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html
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Permalink Reply by Kev on
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Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) might work for you. Any edits done to files in a shared dropbox are automatically updated on all systems. You could make a folder for each student that only they could access (along with you of course) so their work would remain private and protected.
Dropbox just shows up as a folder on your system that you can drag and drop files to so it is very simple. Setting up 150 shared folders might get annoying but it would solve all the problems you've mentioned as far as I can tell.
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I have used dropbox for over a year. I love it. I have a folder on my Mac at school and a folder on my PC at home. Whenever I add or change anything on one, the other automatically updates. No need to email myself files, or even use a flash drive. No need to even take my mac home most days unless it is an Apple app I am using. Best of all, you also get online storage of all your files for when you are on the move, and you can search back for files you have deleted.
Similar services include http://mozy.com/home, Microsoft Skydrive , http://www.orbitfiles.com/
However, all that said, I still think it may be awkward for the use of the OP.
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Permalink Reply by casey mayfield on
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Hmmm...I need to sit next to a student and student laptop and try drop.io and getdropbox ... hopefully will have time to investigate this week. Thanks for the ideas! :)
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Larsson on
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And a 50% discount on all paid services when signing up from an .edu address!!
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Permalink Reply by Allison Hart on
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Shared folders in Google Docs...
SET UP
Students create a folder called "SubjectBlock Last, First Turn In (or Handin, or DropBox, up to you...)
So my Language Arts folder would be named "LA5 Hart, Allison Turn-in"
Share the folder with the teacher.
Teacher receives a shared folder from every student (yes 120, but you set this up once)
Teacher organizes the student folders into a folder for each section (search "LA5" and move all resulting folders to the LA5 Homework folder)
- do NOT share that "parent" folder with the whole class - that would share all of their "private" homework folders as well... if you want another shared 'HandOut" folder, create that separately.
TURNING STUFF IN
To turn anything in to you, the student moves their google doc (or any uploaded file now...) into their "hand-in" folder, and it's automatically shared with you.
GRADING
Everything will be in alpha order (last, first) like your gradebook for easy marking. Open the first one and start grading! You can leave comments, paste in a rubric and fill it out, Re-Name the file with the score (add 3/5 , 98, A, an X, your initials, Graded, or whatever) to indicate you have graded it. And/or, when in the doc, click Share> send message to Collaborators and include your score/feedback in the email to the student.
We've tried this set up with a few teachers and are still working through the kinks... but we TRIED a service called SchoolWebLockers, and it was awful. Same process you described - way too slow for anyone who teaches more than 10 kids:)
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Aw, GoogleDocs. Okay, I may have to investigate this. THANK you!
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Permalink Reply by John Sowash on
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This would be my recommendation as well. For exchanging documents Gdocs can't be beat. Here are your potential drawbacks:
1. Requires fast and reliable internet connection. If it goes down, you're done!
2. Gdocs is not as full featured as MS Office. If your students are working on assignments that involve more complex tasks such as charts, graphs, precise margins, etc, you're better off creating in MS Office and uploading to GDocs.
3. Conversion of MS office to GDocs is not always perfect.
I would highly recommend Gdocs despite these issues, just thought you should be aware of them.
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nice thing now with gDocs is you don't have to convert those "more complex" docs to the google format - you can now "upload any file" which means a word doc can be uploaded into the Hand In folder directly. (or a PDF, JPEG or any file!)
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Permalink Reply by Anthony VonBank on
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I have been using this for a few years. Lots of details on the blog I use to trach and test these experiences. The dropbox thing looks cool too, though. Teachingwithgoogledocs.blogspot.com
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Spideroak online sync would allow you to automatically update the changes your students/you make to documents in a folder structure, they also have 'group sync' coming soon that would allow you to work with permissions and have entire groups sync to one folder on your computer etc. Might be worth checking out.
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