Important Reasons to use Dropbox for Students

Dropbox: An important & Useful Web Application

Dropbox is an oft-covered program developed for good reasons. It’s an incredibly useful application for moving files between computers, or keeping a copy of your most important files in the cloud. It is also great for helping students keep their files as mobile as they are. Importance of using dropbox for students is described more elaborately below.

1. Switch Between Computers With Ease
One of the primary reasons students need laptops at school is for the sake of portability. However, with Dropbox, one could be stuck with a desktop and still be able to access his works from anywhere. Just drop the associated files into Dropbox, and after it syncs, it’ll be online and ready to use at any other computer.

One of the most convenient features of Dropbox is that you can access your files not only from the Dropboxes synced with your account, but also from Dropbox’s website. That means you can access your files from any computer, even rental laptops at school. You won’t have to remember to bring along an USB stick ever again.

1. Keep Your Parents Up To Date
Maybe you don’t have release forms to sign anymore, but for (previously) underage teenagers like me, there are release forms for everything. In addition to those, I had Chinese assignments that I always had my parents spell check for me. For parents who are as technology-impaired as mine, it was always easier for me to tell them to pull a file out of a designated folder.

If you’re the type who likes writing home, now you can save money on paper and stamps by just typing out your letter and dropping it into your Dropbox. Or, you can leave your parents lists of things you need mailed to you, or nicely phrased requests for money.

3. Be Smarter About Collaborating On Projects
Until now, Google Docs was one of the go-to tools for collaborating on projects. Unfortunately though, you need to have a Gmail account in order to utilize the sharing and editing of Google Docs to their full potential. Nowadays, that might not be too hefty of a requirement, but it does mean that the adamant Yahoo and live users are out of luck, unless they wanted a completely new email account.

Sharing Dropbox

Luckily for them, Dropbox doesn’t require so extensive a commitment to use its features. Although those who you want to share folders with will have to sign up for an account before they can access the files, the sign up process is quick and relatively painless. If you really don’t want to deal with sign ups though, each file in the Public folder has a link associated with it that you can share with anyone you’d like.

Using Public Links

The best part about Dropbox as a collaborative tool, is that two people can edit the same file simultaneously. In that situation, Dropbox saves two distinct copies of the same files, each with a person’s edits to ensure that both edits are preserved. Further, there is no need to have endless email chains back and forth in order to keep each other updated on the latest going-ons of the project. With Dropbox, all that your collaborators need to do is just open up the Dropbox folder, and pull out the most recent version of the file.

–Courtesy: Makeuseof.com