Google Takeout! Where have I been?

I just found out about Google Takeout today from Brian Gray of St. Stephen's Episcopal School! Google Takeout lets you take your data our of your Google products in one fell swoop or bit by bit! What does this mean for SBISD? This service will provide a viable way for our graduating (and exiting) students and/or staff to take their Google portfolio of work with them! And, it is EASY!

Go to http://google.com/takeout. You'll be prompted to login to your account. Then, you'll be in Takeout! Determine if you want all of your data from all of the listed services, or select Choose services from the menu and select your desired data. You can even select just a folder or two!










Click the download button. You can also request to receive an email once the download file is ready for download to your computer.

From here download the zip file. Your data is in portable and open formats. It should be easy to import to other services or into your personal Google accounts.






This seems to be just what our exiting students need to retain their work! We should also use this at the end of 5th grade for our students when they migrate to the mysbisd.com domain from the e.mysbisd.com domain.

Dropbox and DROPitTOme!

I've known about Dropbox for a while, but I just found out about DROPitTOme yesterday. Together, these two tools offer teachers and students another way to share files when using web 2.0 tools and a variety of devices.


Dropbox is an online storage website where you can store 2 GB of files for free. You can then access those files from any computer, phone, iPad, iPod touch, as well as the Dropbox website. You can access your files even when you're offline. It is simple to share folders so you can work together on the same projects and documents. See other people's changes instantly.

With DROPitTOme, you can securely receive files from anyone to your Dropbox. You setup a unique upload address (web address) with password protection. A person accesses that website, browses their computer, finds the file and enters the password. The file is uploaded to your Dropbox. (To register for a DROPitTOme account, you must already have created your Dropbox account.)

So, how could teachers use these services?

• Teachers could have a Dropbox account and have students use DROPitTOme to upload projects. DROPitTOme automatically creates a folder within Dropbox! 
• Teachers could create a class Dropbox account and everyone could use it as a collaborative space. 

Currently, I'm able to upload a photo from my iPad, but videos are also supposed to be able to the uploaded. I have just contacted Dropbox to find out how to accomplish that. So, students could use the iPod touch or iPad to take video and then upload it to Dropbox to be able to access it from another device to add to a project. Hopefully, they will add the service to allow other file types soon!

What are your ideas?