Today's teachers typically use more than one computer. They often access their files from home, the classroom, and computer lab. Many educators have at least one flash drive for saving and transporting files. Some even clutter their inboxes by emailing files to themselves. There's a free solution to accessing files on multiple computers that is practically invisible to the user: Dropbox. No discs, drives, or emails are necessary. All you need is an internet connection.
You can install a Dropbox folder on as many Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers as you like. The Dropbox folder is just like any other folder on your computer except for two things. First, all files and folders inside of the Dropbox folder are synced to the web and to the other computers where you installed Dropbox. Second, each file and folder has a little green icon indicating that the file is up-to-date.
Dropbox has a great two-minute video that explains the service and a screencast demonstrating its use (the screencast is embedded below). Once a Dropbox folder is installed on your computers, you might forget that you installed it. That's because the Dropbox folder syncs in the background automatically. If you happen to be on a computer where you don't want to install Dropbox, you can download and upload files to Dropbox through their webpage.
Dropbox makes it easy to share files and folders with others. The Dropbox folder has a Public folder inside. Anything put in this folder has a public URL associated with it. This is handy for sharing large files and folders with others, like video and slides shows, that are too big to attach in an email.
Another advantage of using Dropbox is that it serves as a backup. Backups are very important because hard drives can fail, computers can be stolen, and data can become corrupted. A file has a backup if you have at least two copies of it. With Dropbox, you always have at least two copies of your files: the copy on your hard drive and the copy on the web. There's even an undelete option where you can recover deleted files and even restore previous versions of files.
Besides accessing your files from computers and the web, Dropbox has a free iPhone and iPod touch app. With the app, handheld users can quickly view everything in their Dropbox folders.
Dropbox is an amazingly useful service. How can they offer it for free? They give 2GB of storage without charge with the hope the you'll upgrade. They offer 50GB for $10 per month (or $100/year) and 100GB for $20 per month (or $200/year). But really, 2GB is plenty for most teachers' needs.
