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.
I agree it is most essential to backup your work at all times even on personal computers. You never know when something could happen. People often put all their information in one place if something happens to that one hard drive or flash drive you are in trouble. My girlfriend had all her information on a flash drive pretty much since college and I told her to back it up a few weeks ago the flash drive snapped in half, it wasn't the sturdiest one I had ever seen. So she was panicking but luckily we were able to get it to work just long enough to get all the information off of it.
ReplyDeleteI am sure one day all of the physical education teachers will get their own school laptops. The idea of any teacher getting a school laptop is fairly new. I would love to get a laptop from school I find it interesting that all the high school teachers get laptops there but none of the elementary teachers do. I have a feeling this will come with time just as smart boards will. It just takes time to integrate technology into the system especially with tight budgets.