What is DropBox?

A lot of the computing these days is (and definitely in the future will be) done in the cloud. What that means is that your files and applications are not stored locally on your machine but rather on some server somewhere far away (or in Quincy) and you use your Internet connection to access them. The beauty of this is your files are available almost anywhere.

One great piece of (free) software that allows you to share your files easily between different computers is called Dropbox. Why would you need this? A few reasons. One reason might be that you are working on something on your school computer and want to continue working on it at home but don't want to lug your laptop home. Drop it into your Dropbox folder and it automatically appears on all of the machines that you have installed Dropbox on. Slick. Another reason might be you have an iPad or other iOS device and you need to print or work on your file. Drop it the box. It took me a while to see the benefits of Dropbox but I see it as one of the programs I'll used a lot in the future.

Another great (free) app allows you to receive files from other people is called DropItToMe. Two scenarios come to mind. After Camp parents and students want to submit pictures for the Camp DVD. Instead of burning a Cd or putting them on a flash drive and physically getting it to me they can go to DropItToMe and with a simple password upload the pics. Or...and this is cool...if you have students who need to turn in assignments or print them from your computer they can go to your personal DropItToMe site and submit their work. Here's my personal DropItToMe site. A great service that I didn't even know I needed!