Home | Learning Tools | Educator Tips | Tech Tip: How to Transfer Files

HOMEWORK ... for teachers!
How to Transfer Files
Chris Springmeyer
TU Tech Support Supervisor/Specialist

In today's society more and more people find it helpful, if not necessary, to take some of their work home. Educators are certainly no exception. With more students, more responsibility, and seemingly less prep time, it just makes sense to get projects done at home that will lighten your load for the following day or week. Well, I am going to show you how to minimize the headaches involved with bringing work home.

MODES OF TRANSPORTATION
Getting your data home from your school computer used to be as easy as saving it onto a floppy. It can still be that simple, if you are working with mostly text documents or small, basic graphics. When the complexity of your work grows, however, so does your file size! Here are several ways that can get your work home safely.

FLOPPY DISK - Old Reliable. A light thin platter of magnetic media encased in a plastic shell. Perhaps the most standard of all formats. These little guys hold up to 1.44 megabytes of data (slightly less after formatting). A person can hold several text documents or a few graphics on each of these and store them in a bag for transportation. When dealing with a large Powerpoint presentation or intricate graphics, a disk may hold only one file, or worse — not have enough space for even a single file! So, then you can move to one of the following mediums ...

HIGH CAPACITY REMOVABLE MEDIA - ZIP disks, JAZ disks, LS-120, Clik! disks, Shark... There have been and still are a lot of choices in this area, with the closest thing to a standard being Iomega's ZIP disk. Originally released in 100 MB format, the ZIP now has a 250 MB version and is relatively affordable, though far more expensive than a standard floppy. They do seem to be tailor-made for the transportation of large files. They are also faster to move data than floppies.

WARNING: You must have a ZIP drive (which the ZIP disks go into) connected to the computers at WORK AND HOME! Please note also that ZIP 100 drive will not read ZIP 250 disks, but ZIP 250 drives will read ZIP 100 disks ... this, ladies and gentlemen, is what is called BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY.

ONLINE STORAGE - This is my favorite solution. Online storage providers usually give you anywhere from 25 MB to 300 MB of storage space to place your files on. Why is it my choice? Convenience! Your files can be accessed from ANY computer that is connected to the Internet. Price? FREE. Can you swing that? Collaboration? You can make your files 'public' so that your colleagues or students can access your files. My personal picks of these types of services are iDrive and x:drive. They both offer plenty of space and tutorials on how to use their service. The venerable Yahoo! also has such a service, which they call Yahoo! Briefcase. Beyond simple file storage and sharing, these sites also offer cool features like photo albums for your digital images.

WARNING: Online storage speeds are directly affected by your connection speed. Phone dialups are generally fine for most files.

FILE TYPES
MACs, PCs, PCs, MACs ... It seems that the world would be much better off if we could decide on a standard. Alas, that is not and probably never will be the case. This affects you when you work on a MAC at work and PC at home, or vice versa. For example, what if you use Microsoft Works at work and only have Microsoft Excel at home? Are you doomed to never finish your work at home? The answer is, of course, "NO." Read on ...

SAVE AS - In most applications, this option resides in the File menu. It not only allows you to name your file what you like, but also to choose the format of that file. This works great between programs from the same manufacturer — Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works, for example.

WARNING: You will often lose bits of your formatting [typeface, alignment, spacing] when doing this. In addition, you may not find the program that you use at home. If this happens, try the tip below.

TEXT, TEXT, TEXT - I know, folks ... it's not the prettiest thing to look at, especially in this age of endless fonts and pretty desktops, but plain text remains a standard format, the world over. As matter of fact, most web pages that you view are just plain text files that contain formatting instructions that your browser 'translates' into the beautiful pages we love to look at. When working with documents that you know you will have to work on at home, or with someone else, save as a text file [.txt]. When you are done with the content, open it up in your word processor of choice and make it BEA-U-TIFUL!!!

Follow these tips and you'll become more and more comfortable with moving, revising, finishing, and sharing your files — anytime — anywhere! The key, as always, is to keep an open mind and your sense of humor!