Feedback in the fewest steps.....

My last post discussed how nice it is to keep things paperless. The next question is how do you get feedback to students and stay paperless, but still making it meaningful? My teaching partner, Jennie Magiera and I have been working this out. The first idea was to create a Dropbox file for each student and place their work and any feedback on a spreadsheet that was a running document. After thinking about this it seemed we had the students in too many programs and we wanted to streamline the work for them and for the teachers. Jennie suggested we use Edmodo to send direct messages to students and attach any PDF files they submitted. The Edmodo allows it to be password protected and private for the students. The nice thing as the teacher is I can create a template for each assignment and then attach student work with my feedback in the template. I could easily click between open windows and cut and paste both the template, scores from a google form, and a PDF document the students' annotated. Benefits The process is still paperless. The feedback remains private to the student and parents can access the Edmodo site as well. Edmodo, Dropbox and Google Forms can all be accessed from home, which makes this task mobile. Another bonus is the organization of the student work. I always cringe when handing back work with feedback to students or really any sheet and hope it gets put in the right folder, but this is already placed in the "spot" for students. Here are some samples: