HOMEWORK HAND IN ...because less printing means less printing problems
Icon
 Homework Hand In is a small OS X program I wrote in applescript to help facilitate teachers in the collection of digital class work from their students. The program does the following:
  • Mounts a server volume containing a homework drop box for each teacher
  • Asks the student to select the files to hand in, type his/her name, select what period they are in, and to select which teacher the work is for.
  • Creates a new folder inside the selected teacher's drop box with a name formatted "class period-student name"
  • Copies the selected files to the new folder, and ejects the server volume
  • The program will error check each step and display error messages if needed
Seems simple I know, but my hope is that having the program on all district computers insures that even the laziest teachers collect assignments like Powerpoint presentations digitally rather than having students print them out. Updated 3/08 to include enhanced error checking and 10.5 compatibility.
Steps for setting up the Homework Hand In program for school use:
  1. Create a shared folder on one of your fileservers which is read only to everyone (except admins of course).
  2. Inside the share point create a folder for each of your teachers named after each teacher's last name. Set permissions on these folders so teachers have read/write access, but everyone else can only write to them.
  3. Download the Homework Hand In program unzip and open it within Script Editor (located within applications/applescript/).
  4. There are five "properties" at the beginning of the script that need to be edited.  First the path to the shared folder created in step one.  Then the name of the shared folder. A generic username and password to access the shared folder. And finally, how many periods are in a school day.  Note, you do not have to specify teacher names, because the script creates a list of teachers based on the folder names inside the shared folder.
  5. After editing, save the script as an "application bundle" and make sure that read only is checked , and startup screen is unchecked in the save dialog.
  6. Copy the program to the applications folder of every student computer and put a shortcut in the dock.  Show teachers how to obtain the student work from their drop box.