After talking to my building’s technology coordinator, I found out that our school district’s computer network does have a shared storage area. This shared storage is only available for faculty use. However, students do have a place to store their information on the “H Drive”; they cannot share this information with others. The students can only access their own information via the H Drive, through computers hooked up to the network system. Neither the students nor their parents have access to this information from home.
To be honest, I did not know that the district had a shared storage area because the physical education teachers in our building do not have our own computers; therefore if we want to utilize a school computer, we must go across the building and use the computer lab during our planning period. This is a bit of an inconvenience because there is usually a class occupying the computer lab and it’s often difficult to get work done. Therefore, the physical education teachers often bring our personal laptops to school to do work. By bringing my own computer to work, I can create mini exit exams, do graduate work, and search the internet for information and lesson plan ideas. I must admit, I hate lugging my laptop to work, but it does save me a lot of time. Utilizing a zip drive would be more convenient, however I am just a lot more productive in the comfort of my own office.
Also, after talking to some teachers that do utilize the shared storage, they claim it’s important to always back up their work via a zip drive. They use the zip-drive as a back-up because there have been instances when their saved information has been erased because of issues with the network. Using precautionary measures can save them a lot of time and aggravation later.
