As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!
Q: I have a video on my classroom computer I want to use on my iPad. How do I do that?
A: There are ways to do that–email it to your iPad, open through DropBox–but those have issues:
- emailing requires extra steps and time you may not have
- many email accounts limit you to <10MB. What if a video file is larger?
- DropBox has limited space
- like email, you must put materials in DropBox to access them from there (I know–Duh, but that requires planning. What if your inquiry-driven class popped onto this topic on the fly?)
If you’re like me, anything to make your worker faster, easier, less steps is a good thing.
I use Carbonite to make data available to my iPad. Its primary service is as an automatic back-up of your data files, which means they’re always there without me doing anything. Yes, Carbonite charges a fee. I decided the cost was worth it to have an offsite automatic redundancy of the material that makes my life tick forward. I’ve used flash drives and CD’s and Windows built-in back-up, but nothing beats an autonomic tool.
Another plus is that you can access any data that is backed up from your computer’s C drive from anywhere as long as you have the User name and Password. That means when I’m at school and need a file I saved at home, it’s now available.
To access these same files from the iPad, all you have to do is install the Carbonite app, open it, and access the materials in your backed up drives. Everything opens–movies, Word Files, everything (unless it requires Flash, of course). You can’t edit without the appropriate MS Word etc. app.
My only experience is with Carbonite. Anyone have another back-up service that does that?
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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
