For My personal productivity project I was assigned to research Dropbox, one of the utilities that can be considered as Web 2.0. Dropbox is essentially an external hard drive that can be used to store files. Dropbox must be downloaded on to either a computer or smart phone, but once it is downloaded it is very straight forward and easy to use. There are couple of noteworthy advantages to using Dropbox. First of all a teacher can essentially use Dropbox as their external hard drive. Instead of carrying around a physical external hard drive they can go from computer to computer and have access to their files. I don’t know how many times I have had problems opening a document on an external hard drive and with Dropbox I didn’t encounter any issues. Dropbox can also be a safe place to store files as a backup in case your computer crashes.
But this also leads to one of the worries I have of Dropbox. I feel like you would still have to keep your files somewhere else besides Dropbox in case something happens with it. Also there is the issue of having to download Dropbox to use it. There are many applications that don’t require a download that can function as an external hard drive in the “cloud.”
In conclusion teachers can find a variety of uses for Dropbox, however personally I find myself more prone to using the Google Apps suit to basically accomplish the same purpose.
On the surface, the Google Apps appear to accomplish the same things as Dropbox. However, upon further investigation, several significant value-adds exist. If you have Dropbox on your home computer(s); smartphone; and another work computer (like a teacher work station) ... no matter where one opens and updates a document, they SYNC on all devices. This equates to an automatic BACKUP. It's a great way to transfer large files (video, music, etc.); and one can 'share' a sub folder with anyone else. This will make for good class discussion tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI'll await the 2 Web2 App post (or you may append it into this one.