Jimmy, having slacked off playing Half-Life 2 Deathmatch with his friends instead of doing his math assignment, approached his professor, his excuse was already ligned up.
'I handed it in a couple weeks ago sir, you must have misplaced it.'
'Not so,' replies the teacher, whipping out the virtual key to his computer.
'Watch and learn.'
With great finess, he opens the assignment-handed-in database and finds that Jimmy did not, in fact, deliver the homework a week ago as he had attempted to lie.
~~~
It's a story most of us have been through. We slack off, get into a fight with a bear, or be just plain lazy. Either way, we end up putting teachers into very stressful positions in which they begin to doubt their sanity as they search for your non-existant paper.
Solving this problem is quite simple. With a little more than a Student ID (optional), a nine digit number and a sphanzy new database software. Alright, Excel, we can make a revolutionary way to organize paper.
If the kids can work staplers, they can work this. And if they can't use a stapler, they shouldn't be handling paper anyways.
The system uses a hole-puncher with nine adjustable punchers (up or down) allowing for up to 512 combinations. This is for identification purposes only, as a cheap system would not be able to use OCR (optical character recogtion) reliably.
From here they put it into a card-wheel like device (y'know, Rolodexes), in which each head that attaches to the paper would scan for ID (sending this to the database system w/timestamp), then deposit it into a box below the device. The boxes, if changed out between classes, can be considered hard proof of when a student handed something in, and can be used this way without a computer.
The day done, and his lesson learned, Johnny went home to do his math homework, and would do so for the rest of his life.-- Raithah, Oct 26 2006 Come again?-- Texticle, Oct 26 2006 Jimmy lives! He lives! Oh, I thought he was gone forever and now he's back!
On the idea- Seems overly complicated just to keep track of your students. You could just have them sign a sheet when they hand it in and if you lose the paper then who are the higher authorities going to believe- you, the esteemed professor or them, the lowly pathetic dweeb of a student?
In other words- Perfect for the bakery and welcome to our crack filled overly complicated world.-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Oct 26 2006 Wait a minute- Jimmy turns into Johnny! He's an imposter, don't nobody believe him! He's a fake!-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Oct 26 2006 SharpestSpoon : I'll take that as a ... compliment. It's pretty much just a jazzed up hole puncher w/camera. Maybe a little over complicated, but imagine taking hours out of your day to write an essay, yet because of a paper mixup you end up having your marks docked under the assumption you handed it in tardy. I've been there once, and it indeed sucked eggs.
And spoons.
I made a typo when I first wrote it out, and decided to keep it. I've been reading here for a shade over a month, and was wondering when someone would make a sly comment about it :p-- Raithah, Oct 27 2006 Have you ever been in a modern high school ? We get so much homework in math alone that it takes five minutes to pile it up. Having a signature would also over complicate the process. Plus the fact that one could simply show the work to the teacher, get him/her to sign it, then bring it back to their desk for destruction. I know from personal experience that from a passing glance, I can write in French and pass it off as English in another class.
I admit it's a stupid idea, but I'm not going to give up defending it :)-- Raithah, Oct 27 2006 Why thank you. Another comment from a respectable member. I sure do feel honoured.
And to counter your point : a determined student can always steal something that is not bolted down or locked. Discussion over, it's a stupid idea anyways :p-- Raithah, Oct 27 2006 I don't know. I liked it. Sounded a bit like the early punch cards for computers. Would be hard to do, but I could get used to it.-- fett625, Feb 25 2007 Well.. at my school we have gradebooks, and also Powerschool, a program that allows the teacher to input assignments received and calculates grades. The students and their parents are given passwords to access the records anytime. The teachers still lose stuff, though, because they're stoners. Honestly, I've gotten more than a couple zeros that way.-- monk, Feb 26 2007 random, halfbakery