Do you ask your students to create digitial products, but find it hard to keep track of all the links they send?

One solution is to have students use digital tools that will provide a URL (such as Vocaroo, Drawz It!, Scribble Maps, or Google Docs now that they have Google accounts) for their finished product then collect the URL’s using a Google form as an Assignment Dropbox.

Teacher Instructions:

1. Open your Google account. Go to Google Drive and choose "Create - Form"

2. Create a form with the following (or similar) fields:

• Class
  
• First Name
  
• Last Name
  
• Project/Assignment Name
  
• URL
  
• Student Notes/Description

3. Click on “View live form” to view published form.

4. Shorten the URL of the published form (use Google shortener - http://goo.gl/ - or http://tinyurl.com) and share it with students or embed the form into your webpage.

Student Instructions:

Each time you have a student submit a project, they will:

1. Go to the Assignment Dropbox form (using the URL you provided or via the embedded form).
   
2. Fill out the form (let them know it is best for them to copy the URL of the assignment/project and past it into the form.
   
3. Click “Submit”.
   

To View Results:

1. From your Google account, click on the title of the form you created earlier and it will open the spreadsheet that has “gathered” the students’ assignments.
2. Click on the URL to open a tab or window in your browser (preferably Chrome) that will display the student’s project.
   

Credit: http://www.tammyworcester.com/Tips/Tammys_Technology_Tips_for_Teachers.html

Have you ever wanted to simply drop an assignment template in a folder for each of your students so only the student and you can see it? Well, you can and it’s as easy as...Doctopus.

To set it up, you need to copy your roster to a Google Spreadsheet. Be sure you have these headings.

Once you have your entire roster on the Google Spreadsheet with those headings (you do not have to include anything under the group heading - only include if you want to assign them to sub groups or class periods), you can install the Doctopus Script.

It will direct you through each of the steps. However, if you need help, you can watch this great video (courtesy Katie Grassel).

Once you are done, it will provide you with links to the individual files and students will now see the files in their Google Drives. No need to share!

Want to jazz up your signature and make it look professional? In the GMAIL signature line you have the option to insert an image using a web address, but not upload one. Also you might want to wrap the text, but GMAIL will not let you do that. Google Drawing is a simple solution to this problem. If this is something you want to do, click here for directions that include a signature that is already optimized in size for your email.