How a Cloud Drive Can Help You

{This page was updated on December 11, 2011}

If you’re like most teachers, you spend at least some time at home working on something for school. I usually start working on lesson plans at school and then finish them when I get home. I had been using a flash drive in order to carry my files back and forth between school and home. The problem is, sometimes I would forget to bring the flash drive home or take it back to school. Since they’re so small, they’re also easy to lose. (I think this is why I see other teachers at school walking around with their flash drive hanging on a lanyard around their neck.)

Which is why I was excited when I first heard about cloud drives. A cloud drive syncs your files between computers and allows you to have access on your school and home computers and other devices like an iPad or smart phone. It works with any kind of file: music, document, photo, video, etc. You no longer have to worry about backups or hard drive crashes where you lose everything.

If this sounds like just what you need, try doing a search for cloud drives, or check out Dropbox, which is my preference. Most cloud drives offer a certain amount of space for free and then charge a fee if you want more space. Dropbox offers 2GB free. I started out using ZumoDrive, but am now using Dropbox. ZumoDrive worked great for me as far as backing up and storing my files in the “cloud”, but Dropbox seems to sync between computers so much better. I can work on lesson plans or a note to parents at school, hit save, drive home, and pull it right up on my home computer. The next day, I can pull it up on the school computer and print it out, and all of my work is seamlessly synced between the two computers. It feels as though I’m using the same computer, but I don’t have to carry one around.

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