Paperless Mission #12: Collecting Student Work

This is the twelfth installment in my Go Paperless! Challenge Series. You can check out the other entries in the series here. Also be sure to link up with my Paperless Challenge Linky!

Mission #12: Collecting Student Work

Recently, I shared how I distribute student assignments through Dropbox. Today I'm going to share how students turn in those assignments. To do that, I primarily use Edmodo.

Once you've created an assignment in Edmodo, students will be able to see it as they log-in.

If it's just a text-based assignment, they can type the text in the comment section and submit it.

Often, however, my assignments tend to require them to include an attachment of some sort. These can fall into a couple different categories.


Photos & Movies

The Edmodo app allows you to load photos directly from your camera roll as an attachment. Just select "Attach: File."

Documents produced in other apps (e.g., Pages, Keynote, etc.)

This process has a couple extra steps, but it's still easy to accomplish. First, students will need to load the item into their backpack. This is normally accomplished through the "Share and Print" option in the original app. For example, in Pages, you have the option to "Open in Another App."

This will result in the file being added to the student's Edmodo "backpack." Once it's there, students can attach it to an assignment by choosing "Attach: Backpack."

Once the items are selected, students get to rate the assignment using the emoticons and click "Turn In Assignment."

From my perspective, it's a dream. I don't have to worry about receiving "No Name" papers, and I can quickly grade and comment on student work that's turned in.

Apprentice Guides

One of my back to school projects is to make step-by-step tutorials to help students (and teachers) with some of these iPad tasks. The first one is on Turning In Assignments from Pages to Edmodo and you can download a copy of it here.

I apologize that the image quality isn't perfect -- it lost something when I uploaded it to Google Drive for sharing, but it's still very functional. (I'll share higher-quality imaged versions later when I get more completed.)

What programs do you use to collect student work electronically in your classroom? I'd love to hear in the comments section.