Into the clouds - is this the end of the life cycle for pen drives?

Time was when I simple couldn’t bear to be separated from my motley collection of USB pen drives.

But now I’ve joined the rapidly growing group of people who have stuck their heads into the “clouds” for an alternative way of saving, sharing and backing up data…

Cloud computing is nothing new (relatively). But if you’ve already come across a service like Google Docs, then you may already have experienced an introduction to the cloud. However, you can now take cloud computing to an even better level than Google Docs.

In a way, cloud computing is yet another example of outsourcing. The cost and hassle of managing data servers is handed over to specialists. The difference is that not only are businesses of every size and shape turning to the cloud, but so too are individuals.

For knowledge workers like teachers, lecturers (and students) I’m coming round to the view that cloud computing will soon be part of everyday life - just like those little USB pen drives used to be.

My collection of pen drives is now in a drawer. I’m not expecting to use them again. Why? Because cloud computing provides everything I could want in terms of storage, backup and sharing.

Take our upcoming revision workshops for Business & Economics. When the content team met last week, we created a series of content outlines in Word and PowerPoint and immediately posted them to a collaborative folder on Dropbox - perhaps the best cloud computing service available.

As we worked on those files, the cloud was updating and synchronising the files on each computer we’ve loaded the Dropbox software. Thats an up-to-date version of the file available for everyone to use, read etc (including a backup of previous versions in case we need to revert back). No more emailing people the latest version, or getting confused about which file has the latest changes.

Imagine you are working on a lesson plan or starter activity worksheet at home on a Sunday evening. You create the document on your laptop in the lounge, with a glass of red wine in hand and Dancing on Ice in the background. You save the file. Thats it. The file is saved to the cloud, and your departmental PC at school is updated too. You can also simply login to the synchronised online account to retrieve the file. As long as you are online, you can grab the latest version of the file from the cloud.

Its a huge boost to productivity - and a safer way of backing up important files too. A copy of each file is kept on the cloud (servers hosted and managed by Dropbox), as well as on each nominated laptop, desktop, iPhone or whatever.

The cost? With something like Dropbox the price is free for the first 2GB of cloud storage - which should be more than enough for most people. I’ve gone for a 100GB storage, but then we’re supporting a team of over 40 authors and presenters who need to access a pretty diverse collection of materials.

A few weeks in and I wonder (a) what I would do without cloud computing and (b) why I bought all those pesky USB pen drives that I can never remember what is saved on them…