Goodbye memory sticks… Hello Dropbox!
As teachers, we often have to create resources at home and then transfer these to school somehow. When I first started teaching, I remember using floppy disks. These didn’t store much data, so I carried around a box of them with my different files on!
Later, I tried emailing documents to my school / home email accounts and accessing them from there. However, this simply clogged up my inbox with unnecessary files and made the regular messages difficult to find!
A few years ago, memory sticks started popping up and they’ve become incredibly popular since. Teachers buy them for their own personal use, schools buy them for their staff to use, and you can even get free ones at meetings and conferences if you’re lucky.
Over the years, I’ve built up quite a collection of memory sticks, and they’re all tangled up together in one big bundle. However, I’ve often found myself in a spot of bother when I’ve managed to leave my memory sticks at home, or when I’ve brought them to school but have forgotten to save the important documents that I need on them! There’s also the problem of remembering which stick has which documents saved on them. Some teachers at school have also had their sticks become corrupted for one reason or another which has resulted in the loss of almost everything on them!
Earlier this year, I heard about Dropbox. Since registering with this free service, I’ve hardly touched my memory sticks. It gives you 2gb of online storage (which is upgradeable for a fee), which means that you can make files at home, save them in your Dropbox and then access them at school (and vice versa). There is a web interface which allows you to upload / download / rename files. Although this is blocked through our school’s Internet filtering, you can also install a ‘Dropbox’ on your computers. By installing this, you can access your Dropbox via a folder on your computer (which isn’t blocked at my school fortunately!). I’ve set this up in the Finder sidebar on my Macs and it’s incredibly easy to use.
So, when I’m planning at the weekend, I simply copy anything I might need into my Dropbox, and it’s there for me when I’m at school during the following weeks. Files and folders sync automatically and are always updated to the latest version. I’ve also made an ‘Important Stuff’ folder within it where I’m saving files that I need regularly, and there is also a handy ‘Public’ folder which allows you to share your files with others.
If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go. Once you’ve signed up, it’s difficult to imagine life without it!
http://www.mrstucke.com/2009/01/25/sharing-resources/
Also, the above talks you through using Dropbox for sharing files with colleagues and the world- very handy.
You’re right Mark. Dropbox rocks (as I believe the yound people say…)
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I currently use my school KLZ site and my site to sort things that I may need to use over the weekend. It is great as I can plan and share it with my partner teacher in a central place.
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Mark Warner Reply:
March 10th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Aha! We haven’t set up our VLE yet, so Dropbox is great in the meantime. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about KLZ.
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Michelle Reply:
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
We have started by encouraging our teachers to upload timetables and resources that they need to share with other people. Will be showing our teaching assistants how to use it and access things such as staff meeting minutes and the staff calendar.
Actually tomorrow, we will be working with teachers in our cluster to populate a collaboration site. It covers all the major subjects and other areas such as SEN and the creative curriculum.
Due to my LICT role, I was amongst one of the first to setup my school KLZ and can then offer advice to other teachers in our cluster.
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Sounds like a great resource. I like that it jumps right into my MAC. Does it work well on Windows?
I have also become a big fan of Windows Live SkyDrive. If you have a Hotmail, MSN or new Windows Live (http://home.live.com or http://www.windowslive.com/explore)account you have a 25 gb storage space online for free. You do have to load files individually, but I use it all the time for stuff I know I am going to need at multiple locations and on different machines..
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Mark Warner Reply:
March 10th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
I haven’t tried Dropbox on Windows yet, but they have Win / Mac / Linux installers which seem to work in the same way.
25gb on the Skydrive is very generous!
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I’ve tried dropbox but I’m at almost 2Gb and I don’t need the huge amount of space their subscription model offers (it worked seamlessly between Ubuntu and Windows). The solution for me was to use Microsoft Live Mesh which offers 5Gb storage to sync files between windows PCs (mac functionality now too). It also allows you to remote desktop any pc you leave connected. I use skydrive to archive stuff onto that I don’t keep in my active folders. There seem to be more and more of these services popping up, hopefully this will drive the evolution of new and must-have features.
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I love dropbox as you can see from Greg’s post above. If only it wasn’t blocked at my school
Paranoid they are I tell you!!
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I’ve been using DropBox for a while. I had this kind of idea while washing the dishes and thinking about files and syncing. Just had a quick chat with retired (but still supply I believe) English teacher about this.
Though my idea is slightly different:
Pupil completes essay or whatever at home. Pops in DropBox folder. Next time at school, pupil access dropbox either via web interface or through (more preferably!) a sync folder and then print off at school for submission! No USB drives/CDs or crumpled paper. Also saves on late submission, the good old “my print broke/my USB drive is corrupted/I didnt have any CDs”.
Tweet me back with thoughts.
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