[K12OSN] Homework DropBox Idea

[Burke Almquist]

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     How about just emailing the assignment? If that is not possible,  
other posters have given good suggestions regarding the drop box. The  
only thing I'd add is the "sticky bit" to the folder.
     A better solution, though slightly less convenient, is to set  
the perms on each students home dir to 770. If you are using the  
default Fedora/Redhat user setup, then each user also had a new  
default group created in which they are the only user. Maybe each  
student's group should have their teacher (or possibly all staff)  
added to it so they can view their files at any time for any reason.  
This would also make it possible for a teacher to "pickup"  
assignments, rather than for students to hand them in. Like I said,  
less convenient, but it is simpler and less prone to cheating attempts.

On Jul 25, 2005, at 9:05 AM, Jim Kronebusch wrote:

>> directory structure like so
>>
>> /homework/compsci
>> /homework/saps
>> /homework/7a
>>
>> one directory for each class, but no individual user folders inside.
>>
>> I want to give the kids responsibility to "hand-in" their assignments
>> into the appropriate folders.  BUT:
>>
>> I don't want other classes to be able to mess with their files.  so
>> compsci kids can't mess with saps files, etc.  But I wanted
>> to take it
>> further and say that the compsci kids could hand in their
>> finished work
>> into the /homework/compsci folder, but not delete or change the file
>> once it is there
>>
>
> First of all, pardon my last message, I bumped send before typing :-)
>
> With the help of this list about 2 years ago now I got our homework  
> drop
> folders setup.  I wanted a very simple to manage setup that didn't
> require me updating class groups all the time (I have no class  
> groups on
> the server).  I have a folder called "Drop" under /home.  Under this I
> have each teacher listed, under that I have their classes listed by
> hour.  Example:
>
> /home/Drop/Frisby/2hr
> /home/Drop/Frisby/4hr
> /home/Drop/Meurer/5hr
>
> You get the point.  Drop has 2755 permissions with adm being the owner
> and staff being the group.  Staff is assigned of course to all staff.
> Each teacher folder has 2775 permissions with the teacher being the
> owner and the teacher the group.  Each class folder (or hour) has 2773
> permissions, with the teacher again as both the user and group.  This
> allows all users of the system to navigate through the folder  
> structure
> to any drop folder.  They can drop to any drop folder.  They however
> cannot delete or view any items from any drop folder unless they  
> are the
> teacher who owns the drop folder.  The reason I did things this way is
> that there may be 3 compsci classes, this method avoided getting
> homework from all three classes mixed together.
>
> Next issue is that when dropped, the student still maintains ownership
> of that file.  This could cause trouble for the teacher trying to
> move/delete/modify the file, or allow the student to overwrite it at a
> later date.  Plus this file still belongs to the student quota and not
> the teachers.  With the help of the list I now have the following  
> script
> set via cron to run every minute.  This script takes the owner of the
> teacher folder that houses the class drop folders and sets the
> permissions of all files inside to be owned by the teacher.  Now the
> student no longer has access to the file, the teacher has full
> priveleges to modify and work with it, and it is now the teachers
> responsibility to clean up the drop folders because the files there  
> chew
> up their quota.  Here is the script:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> for file in /home/Drop/*
> do owner=$(ls -ld \
> "$file"\
> |awk '{print $3}')
> chown -R $owner \
> "$file"
> Done
>
> Very simple file, but very effective.  If you still want to break your
> drop folders down in the order you specified above you would only need
> minor changes to the script:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> for file in /homework/*
> do owner=$(ls -ld \
> "$file"\
> |awk '{print $3}')
> chown -R $owner \
> "$file"
> Done
>
> Then just be sure the class folder is owned by the proper staff  
> member.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> P.S.  If anyone does this and also has Apple users writing via
> Appletalk, do yourself a favor and create an .AppleDouble folder under
> each drop folder and give 777 permissions.  This will eliminate the  
> many
> crazy problems with Appletalk and permissions.  And since no one knows
> they are there I don't believe it causes much security problems.
>
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>
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