Dropbox

  As you may know the Maine Laptop Initiative will be providing new machines to teachers next year.  What this means for everyone is that anything on your current device will need to be backed up.  One solution that we have been using a lot lately here at FHS is Dropbox.  This cloud-based solution offers a free membership that provides 2GB worth of space.  Not only is Dropbox a website but you can download it to your computer as well.  This video(2:18) explains well how Dropbox works and what the advantages are.  Google Drive can be used in a similar way, but Dropbox is not a document editor.   It only preserves whatever type of file you already have.

A few weeks ago a teacher at FHS wanted to help a first year teacher(friend) out in Hawaii.  Her problem was that she had all these files in folders on her desktop and she wanted to share them all with her buddy in paradise(Hawaii) in an organized manner.  After downloading Dropbox and making an account, we easily dragged the needed folders to her Dropbox.  As a result, her buddy in Hawaii was able to access all of the documents via the organized folders just seconds later.

If you are interested, check this demo.  The video was made by Drew Houston, the MIT graduate who created Dropbox in 2007.  He does a nice job explaining the uses of Dropbox.  But, if you need any help or guidance please come see any one of us (Dan,Peggy,Cathy, and Anne).

Finally, a natural concern about Dropbox might be the security of your stuff.  My personal feeling is that the cloud is more reliable, accessible, and safe than backing up on one or several hard drives. One thing I can now do thanks to Dropbpox is pull up any library receipt, personal teacher certification, schedule, calendar  or other document by scanning them in with the document feeder(3:44), emailing them to myself, and then moving to Dropbox.

It took Dropbox 4 years to reach 50 million users. Recently, Houston announced in November that Dropbox had 100 million users worldwide. The Dropbox service is also integrated with many devices, apps, and other services.

Barret, Victoria. "Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 19 Jan. 2013. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbox-the-inside-story-of-techs-hottest-startup/>.

Houston, Drew. "The Dropbox Blog » Blog Archive » Thanks a (hundred) Million."The Dropbox Blog RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.