Take a Drive into the Cloud
There are a lot of clever ways to keep from losing those little USB “thumb” drives, but they invariably end up missing or damaged or you just have too many to keep track of them all. Now you can forget about those and try a “cloud drive” instead, which you can access with most internet enabled devices with a browser. Clark eLearning support techs have tested such free services and although there are many with great usefulness, we prefer one called Dropbox for its ease of use, student-centric features, and compatibility with the software used at Clark. Sometimes when this storage concept is shared there is initial confusion between the Digital Dropbox in Blackboard and the Dropbox in the cloud, but once both have been experienced, the differences should be clear. Although most of your Dropbox folders are private, you will have a public sub-folder where you can place such files (plus a special folder for sharing photo galleries). So even if you’re up against a deadline and unable to upload an assignment file into Blackboard, you could still place the file in the public folder in your cloud Dropbox and post a link to the file for your instructor to download. We only have this warning… The old excuses, “The dog ate my homework” or “I lost my USB drive with my report on it,” won’t work anymore with Dropbox around!
While Dropbox functions as a cross-platform cloud storage service that works with Windows, Mac, Linux, and many mobile devices with a browser, its real strength is in file synchronization, history, and sharing. As each computer or device onto which you’ve installed Dropbox is used to access your cloud folders, your latest saved revisions to any files will be there, automatically synchronized for you. If you’re on a public computer, you can still use your Dropbox by logging in on the web interface. The revision history support also allows for file recovery, so any files you may have deleted or mistakenly altered can be brought back. This makes it handy for students on the go, because you can’t lose your assignment no matter where you are. As long as you have access to a device with the program to open, edit, and save the file, you can do your homework.
Another potentially useful feature for students is the ability to create a shared folder with other students using Dropbox, which would allow you to collaborate on a project. It’ll keep track of the history of any files you might be working on together, enabling more than one person to edit and save files without losing the previous versions. A quick notification will appear to other users that a change has been made.
The file history is limited to 30 days in the free version of Dropbox and the space allocation is 2GB to start, with up to 8GB possible. Those users who want more storage (up to 100GB) and extended features can upgrade to a paid version. If you’d like to learn more about Dropbox and how it works, click below:
