Work Collector: Collect Your Students' Digital Work in Seconds


How do your students send you their work from iPads or laptops? Through Google Drive? Dropbox? Student Server? Do you use Showbie? How about SeeSaw? Or do you go old school and have them save to a flash drive? There are MANY ways that work can be submitted from both laptops and iPads. If you are an elementary school teacher then you know the obstacles that arise when we try to get 6 year olds to send us their work from their iPads or laptops.

Are you ready to have your world turn upside down??? Enter...

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An extremely brilliant ITRT on my team, Michael Price, adapted this script (what you run when you follow the step by step directions) from Amit Agarwal  and turned it into an incredible tool that I use and many of my teachers use in the classroom. I cannot begin to tell you how thankful I am of Michael's creation! It is great because it looks and operates the SAME way no matter which device your students are using.

The Work Collector can be created in just a few steps and it automatically creates a folder in your Google Drive that students send their work to in just a couple of clicks on a computer or taps on an iPad. NO LOGINS NEEDED for this!! After you follow the directions to install your Work Collector, a link populates that your students can navigate to from laptops or iPads which will allow them to attach a file and send it to the folder that was automatically created in your Drive. Here is what that website link looks like:
Students click "Choose File" and select the file they want to submit from the camera roll (when working with iPads) or wherever they saved their file on their computer.

I don't even have students enter their name in the "Your name..." box because the files come into your Google Drive labeled as how they are saved. (You might want to have your students save their files as: FirstName_Project Title if working on computers. You cannot name the files on an iPad) Students click "Upload File", wait for the "You have uploaded your file successfully" message and then BOOM! Their file pops up in the Work Collector folder that is automatically generated in your Drive when you run the script. Note: You need to upload one file through your Work Collector website before the Work Collector folder appears in your Drive.

Click {HERE} for the directions on how to create your own Work Collector. 

Work submitted from iPads can be done two different ways:
           1. You could bookmark your Work Collector link to your ipad screen. Follow {THESE} directions if you are not familiar with how to bookmark websites on iPads.
           2. Turn your Work Collector link into a QR code. This is my favorite option. I project my Work Collector QR Code on the screen that students scan to submit their work:



My teachers have their QR Code printed and posted in a central location in their room:


Many people have asked if the Work Collector can send student work to certain folders within Drive. Unfortunately it is not THAT smart. All I do is drag the files that come to my Work Collector folder to a separate folder I create in my Drive. It takes seconds.

I also know of teachers who make their Work Collector folder "view only"and bookmark that folder on their iPads or make the link available for students to access. This allows students to double check and make sure their work has been submitted.

Work Collector Directions

Doug Saunders, an incredible high school ITRT in our county, made this tutorial video if you are interested in checking it out!


Feel free to contact me regarding any questions you might have about installing your own Work Collector. It really is life changing!


5 comments

  1. This is SO AWESOME! I'm trying it today with Kindergarten students but have already tested it and it works! I wasn't sure if it would let me have separate folders if I created a whole new work collector link. Unfortunately it didn't BUT now that I created the separate links it labels it in the details of the file. This is helpful b/c I teach in computer labs with over 1, 000 students. :-) THANK YOU for sharing! This is hopefully going to make our new world of 1:1 iPads in K-2 a whole lot easier!

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    1. So glad you can use it! It sure has been a life saver for our department :) Have you heard about the newest iOs that is about to launch. THAT is going to be life changing! Our Tech with Us Blab will be talking all about it this Thursday night at 7:30pm ET and we would love to have you join us. Click HERE to register

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    2. Thanks! I JUST read your post about the iOs update. Sounds exciting...hard to wait!
      Unfortunately the work collector process wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped. I'm not giving up yet but I've done it with three Kindergarten classes and it's been the same for all three. For some students it uploads their work 3 or 4 times and other students it loaded a file that looks similar to the docs icon called untitled. Any experience with this kind of result? I was able to meet up with a few students because they had luckily typed their name in before uploading. For some I found it to be user error but others I personally helped them try again and it had a variety of results again.
      Again, the pace is fast in K tech so I'm going to keep trying but just wondering if I've done something wrong in the setup?
      Thanks again!

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