In the early days of my teaching career, I had an office, a desk full of lesson plans, a file cabinet full of textbooks, a computer and a printer. Shortly after the Internet was introduced at my school, we received school email accounts. Later on, I found myself teaching faculty how to integrate technology in their classroom and so was given some storage space on the school's main network server.
Nowadays, teachers can use cloud storage over the Internet to store lesson plans, online textbooks, media files and more. In order to get a cloud storage account, you will need to apply for one with a cloud storage provider. Luckily, there are many cloud storage providers out there and the best news is that they are FREE!
Before I provide you with a list of some of my favorites, here are some quick tips for choosing a cloud storage provider for your online storage needs.
Nowadays, teachers can use cloud storage over the Internet to store lesson plans, online textbooks, media files and more. In order to get a cloud storage account, you will need to apply for one with a cloud storage provider. Luckily, there are many cloud storage providers out there and the best news is that they are FREE!
Before I provide you with a list of some of my favorites, here are some quick tips for choosing a cloud storage provider for your online storage needs.
4 criteria for choosing a cloud storage provider
- Price
Choose services that offer basics for free and nominal pricing for premium versions that give more storage space. Veer away from services that are more for large businesses. Their prices will tend to be much higher.
- No software installation
Favor the services that don't require you to install software. That way you don't have to worry which computer has the cloud storage program on it.
- File types and sizes
Choose services that allow you to store as many different file types as possible. Some cloud services have limitations on what files you store and how big they need to be. For instance, if you need to store lots of video and presentation files, you may want to consider multiple free accounts for storage. I did this when I taught graphics and web design.
- Sharing capabilities
Choose services that allow you to share with one person or groups of people easily. In addition, it is helpful if the service has some form of tracking to monitor how many people download files and control how many times a file can be downloaded.
Cloud storage providers I recommend
- Dropbox (www.dropbox.com)
I use dropbox with most of my consulting clients that I need to share work folders with. Dropbox also allows me to collaborate with my larger clients' production teams on some projects. I once had a year long development project with 187 people from 5 different countries. The team used a huge file repository from Dropbox for the duration of the project.
- FilesAnywhere (www.filesanywhere.com)
FilesAnywhere is my failsafe when I want to work really quickly with an easy interface. I use it for some of the documents attached to this blog. I also store videos of my live consulting and tutoring sessions with clients. I record the sessions, upload them to Files Anywhere and then send my client the link to the recording afterwards.
- Google Drive (drive.google.com)
There is a great walkthrough at the Google Drive Help Center, https://support.google.com/drive/. I like that in addition to just storing documents, I can create my documents (i.e. text, surveys, and spreadsheets) with Google's Apps instead of creating them elsewhere and then uploading them.
