Go to the surplus store and pick up some cheap USB thumb drives. The above drives only cost me $4.00 a piece. You can't really beat that. Label the thumb drives and keep them in your classroom.
I can't tell you how many times my students have saved something on a school computer only to have it not be there on the next visit to the lab.
I know I'm paranoid when I am working on something and always save my work in two places. I save it to the hard drive and to a thumb drive. This is just good practice. That is why I like that I am teaching this practice to my students.
USB drives
- teach the importance of backing up work
- make the work portable so students can finish up work later from a different computer
- give the students a digital portfolio of their work over the year
I think this is a brilliant idea and I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. I borrowed this trick from a fellow teacher at my school.
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2 comments:
Hi Chase:
I had to do this last year with my Gr. 7 class. It did help at the school - because sometimes the server would wipe all the kids' files.
What I found was that some of the USB's aren't recognized on the home computers (I got them from Tiger Direct - same make and model but different home computers) and due to the virus issues, some parents did not want them used at home... OK - fair enough!
Our school has now gone "wireless". We have more problems getting onto the internet and staying connected. We often lose the internet signal mid-lesson. Although I want to use technology, I'm tired of planning back-ups for every lesson I use technology with.
What are other people finding?
Hi Anonymous,
I think as teachers we need to think on our feet. I have often had to write something on the blackboard that I have wanted the kids to see online. If the Internet isn't working when I need it, I try to improvise so the lesson still gets taught or I can just delay it for a while.
I have only had one USB drive that wouldn't work on certain computers. Even when the auto-run doesn't show up, you can often still access the drive by opening a file in MS Word. Just one of my tricks, hope it helps.
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