A couple of days ago Dropbox announced a new and crazy easy way to share files or entire folders with anyone in just a couple of clicks.
All you have to do is open Dropbox on your computer, and right-click on the file (or folder) you want to share.
Select the "Get link" option from the Dropbox menu option and your browser will open showing you the web version of that folder.
Copy the web address and you can send it out to your students, other teachers, your grandmother, whomever! You can even link to it, like I did right here (this is a collection of Digital Dioramas I created in PowerPoint... if you are interested).
Like I said, CRAZY EASY and an extremely useful way to share (you do share, right?). I particularly think this is a simple and elegant way for teachers to share content with students. The great thing is that you can still add files to any folder you share and the link does not change... so, share it once and then keep adding to it.
Oh, and your students DO NOT need Dropbox accounts to view and download your files.
One final tip. If you use bitly (what's bitly?) to create a custom URL for your Dropbox sharing needs, you make it easy for your students to remember. For example, here is that Dropbox link I shared above once I ran it through bitly: http://bit.ly/digitaldioramas. Make one for science, math, reading logs, whatever!
Like I said at the outset, you may not need another reason to love Dropbox but this one might become your most useful reason yet.
Good luck!
*If you don't have a FREE Dropbox account, follow this link to sign up and we'll both get some additional extra space!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you - I LOVE this!!! I have been using dropbox and encouraging my students to do the same but the younger ones just don't quite understand it. Now they really don't have to but can still get the content.
ReplyDeleteFantastic post. Thanks for posting this.
ReplyDeleteAny ideas on how to securely get the URL back to students who do not have email accounts??
Aine Murphy
Aine,
ReplyDeleteI think that this is where bitly can come in handy. If you shorten the URL and make it easy to remember you can hand it out to students in class. So, you could easily have a bitly.com/murphyhandouts folder. You can keep adding to this and the students will just keep going to that URL. There might be other ways to accomplish this but that's off the top of my head.
Thank you for the comment.