If you haven't come across DropBox yet then you are sorely missing out.  Dropbox allows you to have a 24 / 7 memory stick floating around in Cyberspace installed on every computer & iPhone you use both locally and / or in the cloud. If you haven't given it a look here are my top 5 reasons why you should.  You'll never go back.

1:  It's free - Well you get 2 Gb for free which is more than enough for me to save my teaching documents.  No restrictions on file size nut  If you want to get serious about things 50gb will set you back $9.99 per month.

2:  Seamless Synchronisation.  Right you've just finished typing up your lesson plan for tomorrow on your home PC.  Save it to your Dropbox Folder and it will appear locally on every PC you have installed it on at work or at home in seconds.  Don't stress if you get on a computer that does not have it installed you simply login to www.dropbox.com and you can upload and download all your files.  Got an iPhone too, well all you need is the DropBox app and your files are all in your pocket.

3:  Public folders:  Got a homework sheet, video or photo that you wish to share with work mates or students simply save them to your public folder and everyone can access them via a URL.

4:  Never lose anything - Total Security:  If your laptop gets stolen, have a  hard disk failure or have a technical disaster of some sort all of your documents will be sitting up safe and sound in the cloud ready for you to download at your leisure.  Photo's are a must.  Password Security on all private folders too.

5: Say goodbye to disks and Memory Sticks forever:  Remember when you install Dropbox on a PC or Mac the computer views it as a physical drive like a memory stick.  Click and save.  Rename Files, whatever, no messy uploading and downloading or multiple files appearing.  And best of all you won't need a memory stick or disk anymore.  Last week I saved a 700 mb movie on my drop box account in less than 2 minutes.  I doubt my memory stick could even match that speed.  I bought an 8gb memory stick before christmas and it has about 3 files on it, I used to fill these things ( and lose them) regularly.

 

This must sound a little like a sales pitch but there is absolutely nothing in it for me.  It is just my top teacher / tech tool of the moment and would love to hear what you think about it or better still let me know what you can't live without.