Online Assignment Collecting

I was reading a blog post from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne on the benefits of collecting assignments electronically and was especially intrigued by the idea of recovering the valuable instruction time lost to handing back papers. There is nothing I find more frustrating than sitting around waiting while an instructor is returning work to the entire class.

 I looked at both DropitToMe and Google Docs as formats for collecting students work. For the outcomes I would  want, I like Google Docs for student work the best.  The reason is because the student, the teacher, and the parents have a clear record of progress in the class.  In the case of a student who is struggling the teacher, student, and parents can sit down together and review exactly where and how the student has made progress and what areas need additional instructional help.

Here is how I envision this working.  In my Google Docs account I will create a folder for each of my students and share individual folders with each student.  Then when they upload assignments or work we both have access to that information.  I can make notes and comments on the documents for the students.  I stand firmly on the side of students learning from correcting themselves; so, when students have made changes or corrected their work, they can upload the updated version and I would have access to both the original and the update for review.

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