Drop.io, a free service that I’ve mentioned before, has added another free service. The new Drop.io widget is a widget (button/icon) that you can install on a blog (or other website you maintain) to have files uploaded directly to your drop.io account. Installing the drop.io widget is very simple, the video below explains it perfectly. Click here to see how I’m using the drop.io widget on a blog for one of my freshmen classes.

This video from Drop.io explains the service very well.

Application for Educators
The drop.io widget is an excellent tool for collecting student work electronically. Rather than having student work clutter your email account or making students go to a separate website to submit work they can upload their assignments from the same website where they participate in online discussions and find class notes.
The added benefit of using the drop.io widget is that unless you tell your students that they’re uploading to drop.io they’ll never know. They’ll think that you have awesome web programming skills and that you created a secret online collection box off of your blog.