Shell scripting to the rescue!

# Zip their work up
for DIR in *; do ( cd $DIR; zip perl-day1.zip * ); done

# Realize that I have to get rid of the archives temporarily because
# I might want to insert all the files into a buffer, so back it up first
tar zcvf archive.tar.gz $(find -name \*.zip)

# Remove all the zip files
find -name \*.zip -exec rm {} \;