Friday, September 7, 2012

Drop Box is da' Bomb!

Occupational Therapists! You're itinerant... you are at a school that is not your base school and you need that Eval form. Dang! You left it in your office.

Speech Therapists! You're itinerant... you are at a school that is not your base school and you need those picture cues you use for that artic' lesson you like (apologies SLP's if that's not quite what you do). Dang! You left them in your office.

Parents! You're definitely itinerant!  You are at work and your spouse needs that form you have with you... Dang!

Students! You're using your iTouch to take pictures of your home work. Your parents are soooo demanding, and they want to see it too. Dang!

Drop Box
No worries. OTs, SLPs, Parents, and Students... OT's you keep such necessary documents on your Drop Box account. SLP's you do the same with these commonly used treatment pics.  Parents, you can take a pic of the form with your phone, and push that form up to Drop Box. Students, take a photo from the whiteboard, and upload it to Drop Box. Now your parents can see it, and you can view it at home on the family computer.

Problems solved.

According to the developers; "Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones, [iPads, iTouches,] and even the Dropbox website", incase your not on one of your devices but still need to access something.

Dropbox delivers! Many of our staff and students across the school district are using it. Personally I have loaded it on my iPad, iPhone, Macbook, and home desktop, my wife's iPhone and laptop, and my two son's iPhones. Yes, we drank the "Apple Koolaide".  But at a moment's notice, I can share a Social Security card with any member of my family.  Or any other document.  Dropbox is password protected, and for 2 GB of space, it's free.

Home Page
So. How to get Dropbox. The easiest way is to use your laptop or desktop first. Go to Dropbox.com. The page on the right, is the page you will get, whether your on a PC, or a Mac.

There is an excellent video right on the first page that will tell all about Dropbox, and the ins and outs of using it. On this same page is the "Download Dropbox" button. It's big and blue. You can't miss it.

Directions




Download Dropbox, install it, and follow the directions.  The directions are so user friendly, I really can't improve on them!


When installing, you will be given three choices of storage. As I stated above, the 2 GB is free. That has been sufficient for my uses. Afterwards, load the software again on all your other computers, and then get the app for your iDevice or Droid phones.  The apps are free as well. You will log into those devices using your same username and password as you do with the laptop/desktop software. 

I'd love to hear how others are using Dropbox in teaching, therapy, or just life.

Happy therapy!



4 comments:

  1. This is something I keep meaning to set up. I use Evernote to access web documents but not personal documents. Any tips on comparing Google Drive to DropBox or basically the same?

    PS - Your post is pretty funny. Reminds me of late night TV commercials. Good stuff.

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    1. Thanks YTSI, I appreciate the kind words. Yes, I've likely watched waaaay to many late night infomercials!

      I use Evernote as well and really like it. Evernote strikes me as more of an online work space. I keep contact notes that my colleague and I share for our Assistive Tech team. Also keep training plans that my fellow wrestling coach and I share. It has a pretty nice user interface for writing, adding videos, and photos.

      I use Dropbox as more of an online storage space. I don't carry my families Social Security cards in my wallet, but I have jpegs of them in Dropbox. I won't ever write in them, or alter them, but if any of us (my wife, 2 sons, or I) need it, we can access it. Dropbox differs also in that it does not pay any attention to what format the file is your storing, whether it's a word doc, pages, excel, jpeg, mp4, QuickTime, etc...

      While they do have some overlap, such as being realtime cloud-based, Dropbox really excels at raw storage, while Evernote offers a nice user-interface to work in your documents.

      Thanks again!

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  2. Thanks for posting! As an itinerant SLP (and your description was right, I do use Dropbox for a lot of premade materials :)), Dropbox is a lifesaver. One thing that I do take into account is that Dropbox has some security issues. If I need to save something like a schedule with names on it, or a draft report to work on at home, I encrypt it first to prevent any HIPAA violations. For anyone else saving sensitive information, I would recommend this article: http://lifehacker.com/5794486/how-to-add-a-second-layer-of-encryption-to-dropbox

    Thanks again for sharing!

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    1. Hey Jill E! Thanks for Your comment. Really good insight regarding security for confidential information. The article you link offers some simple and practical solutions to navigate this issue. I encourage folks to read it if you have confidential stuff on Dropbox!

      Thanks again, Jim

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