Teacher Tech Links

Technology is great for making our lives easier. Sometimes it makes life more complicated and sometimes it breaks down right when you need it most. The first rule in computer use should be to always backup everything. Hard drives WILL fail and they have a tendency to do so at the most inconvenient times. When the stuff breaks in the middle of class what do you do? As a teacher you need to have a backup plan.

File Storage

Not too many teachers still compose lessons by hand these days. Most of our work is done on a computer at home or on one that is provided for us at school. Our work is saved either on a local hard drive or on some kind of network storage. One of the biggest headaches you will ever have to deal with is when one of those devices fails or gets erased and all your hard work is GONE.

The easiest and most basic way to help protect yourself from such failures is to use an external backup hard drive. External drives are often setup to connect to your computer through USB or Firewire and many come with built in software that will backup all your files automatically based on a scheduled plan. If you shop around you can probably find a quality external backup hard drive for around fifty bucks.

Another good way to backup files it through some sort of online storage. By using online storage you not only backup your files but also gain access to them anywhere there is an internet connection. One of the most common online storage sites is DropBox.com but there are many options out there to choose from.

As a second line of defense in addition to some sort of external or online backup you should occasionally backup files using some type of permanent media like a CD or DVD. This is a good precaution because even with your files backed up on an external drive you could still lose everything in the event of a power surge or giant coffee spill. It can be a bit time consuming but at the end of the day this is the most secure method of backing things up. I would particularly recommend doing this at the end of each school year. Most districts do maintenance over the summers and it would be a shame to leave everything on your hard drive at the end of the year only to find that it was erased or reformatted while you were on vacation.

Low Tech Lesson Backup

For any lesson that requires the use of technology you should also have some sort of idea about what you would do if the technology failed or stopped working. There is nothing worse than discovering that the web page you were going to use for your lesson is down right when you need it, or having your computer freeze in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation. You don’t have to plan a whole entire backup lesson but if you have thought through what you would do in the event of a worst case scenario you will save yourself a lot of hassle. In the end the technology is not the lesson. The technology supports the lesson. You should be capable of teaching the material the old fashioned way if everything falls apart.