APU Careers & Learning Online Learning

How I Quit Worrying and Learned to Love Dropbox

By Scott Manning
Online Learning Tips, Student Contributor

At some point during the past four years of online education, I quit lugging around my thumb drive. Between multiple computers at home, at various libraries, and at work, I needed a single spot to view all my school documents. The thumb drive was the most viable option in all its 4 GB of glory. I carried this thing in my pocket at almost all times, often feeling for it like it was a pair of keys, a wallet, or a cell phone. I could not lose it!

Then one day I came across Dropbox. This online file system allows you to store and edit documents locally on a computer and as you make changes, Dropbox will automatically synchronize those changes online in the cloud! There is no manual check-out or check-in. If you have Dropbox installed on multiple machines as I do, then Dropbox will keep all those files synchronized between the machines. Finally, if you cannot install Dropbox on a particular machine, you can still access your files via a browser.

It makes managing files so simple that you forget how much of a struggle this sort of thing was in the past.

Still, I kept my thumb drive with me at all times. Then at some point, that stopped. It was at least a few years ago, but I stopped worrying about having the thumb drive and it sat at home. If I edited a document at work or at a library, I could come home and see the changed document on my home computer.

I ditched the thumb drive and so should you.

 

About Scott:

Scott Manning is currently an undergraduate at American Military University working on a degree in military history. He subscribes to the statement by Malcolm X that says, “History is a people’s memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the lower animals.” Everything that occurred in this world has accumulated to produce our present day. Scott writes about his passion for history and military history on his blog, Historian on the Warpath.

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