Create an Online Folder for students to turn in work for free

This is a great service for those of you who want to sort of go paperless and need a virtual place to turn in files.

Although the teacher should have dropbox you DO NOT have to have dropbox installed.

You can then have them upload files with your secret password that are delivered right to your dropbox inbox in a folder called "Dropittome"

Here's how:

1 - Sign up for Dropbox
The teacher should set up a dropbox account. www.dropbox.com

2.  Sign up for Dropitto.me
Go to www.dropitto.me and sign up for an account. Remember that your USERNAME will be your link so make it simple. Of course, mine is coolcatteacher but you can make yours whatever you wish.

Don't use the same password as Dropbox although you can use the same email. Pick an email so it will let you know when a student has submitted work.

3. Connect the Two
Remember to allow it to connect with Dropbox as the screen shows below.


 
4. Get students ready to share. Come up with a naming mechanism.
My 8th grade students have their lessons begin with the letter L, ninth grade uses E (for exercise) and 10th uses A (activity). Every assignment has a standard 3-4 digit series of letters / numbers that they must name the file followed by a dash and their first name. Make sure they know this before they upload! I just write it on the assignment on my board. You might also want to distinguish periods.

It might be helpful when you come up with this simple method that you make a poster and hang it on your wall.

5. Share your link and upload password with students.
You will get a link and set a password to UPLOAD. This is NOT the same as your account and shouldn't be! Make it something simple that everyone will know.

If you are a savvy teacher who has created email lists to send messages to parents, you might want to send them an email with information on uploading the files. Feel free to copy what I used below and adapt it. Make sure that you insert your information in the red locations.

Dear parents,

This year, the students and I are working to make our classroom as paperless as possible. I've created a private turn in location online for them to hand in their files.

To turn in their files they can go to http://www.dropitto.me/insert username
and pick the file. They should make sure they name it properly (we covered this in class) so that it will be graded with the other work at the same time and there will be no delay in entering their grade.

The password to upload is **insert password**. You may want to note this information in your files or bookmark the link on your home computer if you think they may want to turn in work from home.

If you don't have a computer or Internet access, don't worry, they will have time in class as well.

I am enjoying learning with your student this year. Please contact me if you ever have any questions.

Appreciatively,

Mrs. Davis

Other ways to use dropbox
I have my students set up a full dropbox and we install them on the local machines. They can drag files into the dropbox. Sometimes, however, there may be a few confidential things that I want handed in separately and this dropbox will be used for that purpose.

Can You Use Services Besides Dropbox?
Note that the service Send to Dropbox does something similar except with email, however, when I went to the page about this service it is receiving horrible ratings and I don't have time for lost files.

The other option, File Stork, 

Shouldn't everything be Private that is turned in?
Many learning management systems (LMS) or course management systems (CMS) have a way to drop files to the professor, but I'd like to point out an article written on Educause that points out that most work should NOT be turned in privately. I'd prefer to have them print to a PDF file and then have the other students annotate edits and suggestions via Adobe acrobat if we're using a word processor, for example.