I’ve had quite a few enquiries about what we are doing at YBE ‘cloud-wise’ so I thought i’d bung it all in a blog post for you to read.
I implemented Dropbox for a few reasons, firstly, to allow pupils to put work in a central location where they can access it whenever they want to. By sharing their folder with me, I have access to their work that I too can assess wherever I have an Internet connection, with Dropbox on iPad it makes it even easier. Another big factor in implementing Dropbox is the savings that can be made on toner/paper etc, we were wasting huge amounts of paper in constantly reprinting work that needed to be improved. In addition to this pupils were also stood at the printer for large periods of time waiting for work. Since its arrival, I am finding I am getting a much more regular submission of work from the majority of pupils. The admin side of things behind utilising Dropbox is taking a little longer but the results pupil wise are worth the increased efforts.
Taking Dropbox further, if some pupils haven’t set up an account eg Year 8, they can still send work to my dropbox by using a site called www.dropitto.me with this you give pupils a URL, mine is www.dropitto.me/ahd a password, and they can upload a file to my Dropbox account. Lastly, we are using the widely publicised live@edu for our email solution which also incorporates office online and sky drive storage for all pupils with the potential for use in all subjects as dropbox may be too much for the majority of faculties.
Last year we were using google email but found their relentless security a real bind in school and were having huge issues getting new users on the system. The system was easy to use but Googles constant need to enter captcha codes was a nightmare.
All in all the system is working very well now, as I said, it requires more admin effort on my part keeping their mark sheets in order class wide but as a bi-product I feel much more organised so it’s totally worth it.
Hope this sheds a little more light on it for you and I’d be glad to assist further should any of you need more advice on it.
This is also an interesting article re cloud computing.
My Digital Life 