My Dropbox as school exchange folder

[SimpleSi]

I've been using My Dropbox as a very convenient way of sharing common files that I use in my schools.

 

I have it installed on my curric servers and on my home machine and its been great - I've found it a lot less hassle than using a pendrive with the great advantage in that I can't lose it physically

 

I've had a cunning plan to get one account per school (talking primaries here) and use it as a common shared folder for all the teachers/TAs.

 

I'm probably going to have to use the $9.99/month to gete the 50G option if its usuage takes off.

 

Has anyone had any bad experiences with My Dropbox or could they personally recommend another product supplier (no googling please ) that would do the intended job

 

regards

 

Simon

[box_l]

I would think very carefully about using external storage for things like common staff.

 

What sort of data gets stored there? You will probable find that there will not be a lot you can store as lots of data requires FIPS 140-2 or above comlpliant storage/transport.

 

Also, how does it handle multiple users editing the same document?

 

BoX

[PEO]

I've been using My Dropbox as a very convenient way of sharing common files that I use in my schools.

 

I have it installed on my curric servers and on my home machine and its been great - I've found it a lot less hassle than using a pendrive with the great advantage in that I can't lose it physically

 

I've had a cunning plan to get one account per school (talking primaries here) and use it as a common shared folder for all the teachers/TAs.

 

I'm probably going to have to use the $9.99/month to gete the 50G option if its usuage takes off.

 

Has anyone had any bad experiences with My Dropbox or could they personally recommend another product supplier (no googling please ) that would do the intended job

 

regards

 

Simon

 

I agree with the above reply, I would go on the Becta website and see what guidlines they have on this. Also you will need to do a risk assesment before proceding.

[SimpleSi]

Well - I didn't think of these issues and I'm not that worried about them as I see it as a method of transferring lesson plans and resources for lessons.

 

 

But thanks for the heads up

 

Getting back to my original thoughts/request ...

 

I've gone and spent my own money on the $9-99/month 50GB option as I'd hit the 2GB limit (and didn't want to faff with cheating with multiple 2GB accounts) as I'm finding it so useful for myself - I use WPKG for software distribution and I can create/amend a package in one school (or download a new program version) and then just copy it to my dropbox and its there for use in my next school :-)

 

However, the one drawback for rolling it out to my teachers is that you have to choose to run it either with a proxy or without - it doesn't auto switch .

 

So, that would make it tricky to use on a teacher's laptop.

 

Dropbox's settings seem to be held inside an sqlLite database (with encrypted data) so trying to write a script to auto-engage the proxy inside school network would seem very tricky to acheive

 

So if anyone is using another product that handles the school/home network switch I'd be very grateful to hear about it.

 

regards

 

Simon