If you impose a good naming standard on the projects, they become very easy to organize in your folders and in your AI2 project list.
Consider combining Class-Assignment-StudentName in the project file name standard for easy sorting.
AI2 supports drag and drop of .aia files into your project list.
Perhaps useful How do i share my project to my teacher
https://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/teach
and
https://community.appinventor.mit.edu/g/teachers
also might be helpful resources.
google sheets may be a good solution... You can make an app that stores values on google sheets and then, using this:
You can receive a push message. So, you know that you need to open google sheets and check your students' comments.
also see here:
A tutorial by me about how to add something to google sheets.
Thank you everyone for your ideas. It looks like the solution is to have the students export their programs to an AIA file, manually send it to me through some system (I'm thinking a Google Form with file upload), then have me import it for grading. The naming standard is a great addon to that idea.
It's rather cumbersome to go through all that for each project for each student, but it's what I was doing before with the previous system I used to teach coding (Alice). I was hoping that since App Inventor is all online there'd be a way for them to simply share their programs with me through a link or some such.
Thanks to who mentioned Google Sheets as a feedback system. I have found it incredibly useful for creating marking schemes and feedback systems over the years! I find it the best part of GSuite, and use it whenever possible.
If the students post their projects to the MIT Gallery their project would be public to everyone but easily accessible to a teacher. It is a method some teachers used in the past where school policy did not prohibit it.
That's an interesting idea, thank you. I'll need to check with my Board to see their policies in this area, but it could work. Of course, I don't know if my students would be comfortable sharing their work with the world. Nothing is as fragile as a teenager's self-confidence!
If you are running G Suite, then perhaps create a google form, to allow students to upload their aia project to google drive. You can then access all the projects that way, and the data would be stored either in the google form responses or out to a google sheet. Most of the setup is automated for you this way.
(You can probably do much the same if you use Google Classroom ?)
The gallery is an official way to do this as @SteveJG mentions. We're in the process of making a new gallery that has a dropbox feature so students can submit work to it. We're also developing a realtime collaboration feature that allows sharing and editing projects a la Google Docs, but we are still working through the bugs.
Besides the .aia file, there is another deliverable to consider.
A Google doc could contain
Those sound like awesome features -- thank you for working on them! I look forward to seeing them in action. If you need a class to try things out in beta or some such, please let me know. (Assuming we even have school this year. No one seems to know what September will bring.)
Great idea, thank you!
This is excellent. I have setup exactly this for their final projects, and found it very effective in bringing together the whole design process into one place. However, I was thinking about something simpler/quicker for weekly or daily stuff I have them work on. Something like simply sharing a link with me to their program.
Hi everyone, I'm with you GP42 there. Look at how Tinkercad works with Classes and students and, what's more, look at what Scratch colleagues developed to deal with classes (and keep privacy). That's been a fatastic improvement from the school point of view. Scratch is in the right way. It would be great and I'd be very grateful if the App Inventor Team keep it in mind for future releases. Thank you App Inventor Team for your amazing project.
The recently refurbished AI2 Gallery has new capabilities for collecting projects together into Studios, using codes provided by the Studio owners.
I imagine the studios might be class assignments.
What about kids privacy? I mean Gmail accounts. I have to name the Scratch example once again. Is there a way to create a Class (project, studio o whatever you want to it) as a teacher and let the students join the Class with no need for them to enter any personal data nor accounts? That is the ideal way of keeping privacy, isn't it? Thanks for your help. I'll have a look at the "refurbished AI2 Gallery".
@Oscar
Developers can create Projects without an eMail using the alternative MIT server ... Non-Google Login Knowing that might help you , however to enter the Gallery, they need an eMail log in. A convoluted way might be for students to use the code.appinventor... site and share the re-use code with the teacher...but that crazy idea in some ways is less private.
There is also a feature of the new gallery called Studios. You can create a Studio and give a submission link to your students to submit their apps to the Studio. I believe that this submission process doesn't require a login but I will check on our end.
Thanks a lot @SteveJG, that really hit the nail on the head. I really appreciate your workaround! The Gallery issue you mentioned is not a drawback actually as my students are just beginners. When they get older, they'll be able to access with their own accounts. Stay safe.
Thank you @ewpatton for your help. However, I prefer the SteveJG's workaround as, with no lockdown, the students can show me their apps on their phones. This is all about making the phone work the way you want it to, isn't it? And students love (as everyone else) showing their progress. Thanks again and stay safe!