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I was recently asked (twice in the same week) to share how I organize student work shared with me via Google Apps for Education. At nErDcamp Northern New England I attended a session on using Google Apps to give feedback to students (See the session notes here) and shared how I organize all the documents that students share with me.
-A side note: As an 8th grade teacher in Maine, each of my students has a MacBook Air to use. We are also a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) District which has allowed me to be a mostly paperless classroom.
When I began using GAFE in the classroom the document list was much easier to navigate, but when the format changed I knew that I had to as well.
I always have students make two folders – an “LA” folder and a “LA Pass in” folder, they share the “LA pass in” folder with me and put it in folder inside the LA folder. This serves a couple of purposes: 1. It provides students with some structure for their own files (I actually lead them through this process for each of their classes). 2. It provides an easy way to share and see what is shared with me – after the folder is shared with me, EVERYTHING they put in there becomes shared with me.
–Another side note: I have strict naming protocols, EVERY DOCUMENT (and folder) must follow this format: [Last name, First initial NAME OF ASSIGNMENT]. I don’t look at anything named “untitled document”.
When an assignment is ready to be passed in they fill out a form I create using GAFE. It asks for their Name (a separate question for last and first), class section, and a link to their shared document. Now, I often will include other items – a question that forces them to go through a formatting checklist, a reminder to put the assignment into their “LA Pass in” folder. I have recently began including a grid question that recreates the rubric so they can self evaluate on the assignment and I also include questions that make them reflect on the process of the assignment.
The student accounts (and so the account I use to interact with them) are managed and I am unable to share the exact forms I use with students but here is a link to a PDF of the form students used to submit the final draft of their poetry essay.
The brilliance of using a form to collect student work like this is that I then end up with a spreadsheet with a link to the assignment that I can sort by last name, class section, or by how they scored themselves.
Watch the video below to see the form, the spreadsheet it creates, and how I use it.
The View From Middle School 
Charlie,
I have my students create a folder and then a shared folder inside the first folder for each of their classes and share the folder with the appropriate teacher. So they have a LA folder and inside they store all their LA work and put things they pass in into the LA shared folder. The link they share via the form doesn’t work if they have not put the document into their shared folder. When the layout of Drive changed, finding student folders and opening them and finding the assignment I was looking for was too time consuming. This way they still are keeping themselves organized and I can quickly access the specific assignment for each of my students.
I’ll also use the resulting spreadsheet created by the form to make notes to myself about the assignment and use that as a place to start my conversation with the student.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
It’s interesting. I’ve been using GAFE for three years now with third graders and I’ve always taught them how to create folders for assignments and share them with me. Students name their folders using last name, first name and computers. On my end, I create classroom folders(I have 600+ students in 25 classes) and move the shared folders into those classroom folders. It isn’t as hard as it might sound because I can look at the share time and date to see which class the student is from. Then, I simply access their folders to find the assignments instead of using the Google Form/link method. I purposely stayed away from tools like gclass folders and even Edmodo for assignments because I feel it is important, as you mention, to learn to be organized. And, using tools that organize folders for them creates a sort of artificial atmosphere that removes that learning from them. Now, with the imminent release of Google Classroom I have to decide if it is going to take away from students learning to organize their Drive. In the end, I believe I will continue to teach the sharing while using Classroom. Best of both worlds. Great post!