Homework online
I'm going to make a distinction between what most of us still see as discrete homework tasks and anytime, anyplace learning.
I'm also going to try very hard to outline the very minimum requirement and add possible extensions later. Apparently not everyone is as geeky about this sort of thing as I am! I don't believe it!
The default, ready made solution is a VLE. However, for a variety of reasons, not everyone has, or wants, one. The pros and cons of this are for another time.
For me, good homeworks are tasks that can be done independently thus reserving valuable class time when the teacher is present for activity that demands the teacher's skills.
The first job is to find a way of assigning the task in a consistent way so that children will always know where to find it; so will their parents, another happy side effect of working online. Teachers should have an online space, like a Google site or maybe a blog, where they can post tasks with links to resources and upload files. Even if you have a learning platform you should have this and link to it from your page. Then if you leave all the work you have done goes with you. All the teachers' locations should be accessible via a link from one point on the school website so that no matter who is giving the homework the children have one place to go to.
So that's the task set. It might be best if the first few tasks were of a type where they still have to be given in at school to keep all the new procedures to a minimum.
The next stage might be to give tasks that are performed online; for example a discussion, post a comment on the website/blog or leave answers on a Google form.
Then come electronic tasks that need to be delivered. The short answer is email but a more sophisticated and possibly easy solution is to have children upload their work to http://dropitto.me/ for which you need a Dropbox account too. The advantages of Dropbox could fill volumes. In short you give the children a link to your Dropittome page and a password that they use to upload their work which should be changed frequently to avoid being saturated with rubbish. When a child uploads the teacher gets a notification. Alternatively if a child has created something online on a web 2.0 site then they need only send the teacher a link.
