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This is the 17th post in the “30 days to using the best of the web’s free tools for educators” series. Be sure to subscribe to the Teacher Challenge blog by RSS, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter to keep up with future challenge posts as they are published.

This guest post is written by Mr Riley.

Objective:

In this activity you will:

1. Learn about DROPbox and DROPitTO.me
2. Set up a DROPbox and DROPitTO.me account.
3. Challange your students to use this new feature to hand in assignments.

Why I use DROPbox and DROPitTO.me!

DROPitTO.me quickly became one of my personal success stories this school year.

Students enjoy “DROP’ing” their assignments to me, and I enjoy saving the school district money on paper and printer costs.

I began using DROPbox & DROPitTO.me in my classroom as a way for students to turn in their assignments.

These two services work together as a team for students to virtually turn in assignments.

I came up with the idea for using these after reading a post on Free Technology for Teachers and wanting to create a greener classroom. As a rule I do not like to use services that are outside of district control.

I feel uncomfortable having students enter in a user name and password for a service that the school system has not approved.  However I also want students exposed to the latest in technology and apply that technology in a useful way to them.

I want the student to say….

“Hey I can use this.” “This is a tool I can use.”

DROPbox is one of these services.

What is DROPbox and DROPitTO.me?

Think of the DROPbox as a folder on your computer’s hard drive.

The difference with this folder is that you can access the information from any internet device.

My Smartphone has an application where I can access anything in my DROPbox account.

By integrating DROPitTO.me I receive a personalized URL. I can post or link this URL to my classroom website.

All students need to do to turn in their work:

1. Go to the personalised URL
2. Enter a secure password and press login.
3. Select the file to upload.

And managing their student work is as simple as:

1. I receive an email that tells me a new file has been uploaded.
2. I also have the file in my dropbox folder.
3. Now I am able to evaluate the student’s work.

Benefits are:

1. This saves time, paper, and other resources.
2. Students are exposed to new technology that they can use and apply.
3. I no longer have to worry about misplaced work or work without a student’s name on it.
4. A real great advantage is collecting work from outside my room.  If a student has work at home or another computer in the school, they access my DROPitTO.me site, upload their file and then I have it immediately.
5. What I love the most is the very positive feedback from students who have begun to use this method of turning in work.

DROPitTO.me includes the file name, IP address, and file size.  I am able to receive any file type, including movies.

How to get started!

It’s as simple as:

1. Register and download DROPbox
2. Now register for DROPitTO.me.

Here’s my biggest tip for managing student work:

Make sure you explain how want students to name files.   This makes your life considerably easier!

I have students save files as their first initial last name and the program and assignment #.  For example, if this is our second word assignment the file name for me would be “mrileyw2” This really helps with organization and keeping duplicate file names to a minimum.

Here’s a video I’ve created to show you how to set up your DROPitTO.me account.

Your Challenge Task

Your challange is to:

1. Set up a DROPbox and DROPitTO.me account.
2. Challenge your students to use this new feature to hand in assignments.

Please leave a comment to let us know:

1. How you are going to or how you use DROPBox?
2. What’s your tips for getting the most out of DROPBox?

About the Author

Mr Riley is a Middle School Computer Science Teacher.

He tries to bring as much of his retail and sales background into the classroom as possible.