Communication and material creation tools

English teachers often need to share files and stay in touch with colleagues. They also need to use software to create material, be it interactive or printed.

This section examines potentially useful software and websites and shows some tips on how to use them.

Dropbox

Dropbox is both a program and a website. It is part of what is known as "cloud computing". By using Dropbox you create a folder on your computer which is copied to the Dropbox server. You can access your files from any computer where the program is installed and configured with your username and password and also via the Dropbox website, which is, of course, password protected so that your files are as private as you wish.

Dropbox is free and offers you 2 Gb to store your files, with as many folders and subfolders as you need. You can decide which folders are public and get a link to these folders and their files, so that you can tell people where to download a specific file from. You can keep a folder and its files private. And you can also keep a folder partly private, which means that only the people who you invite will be able to access the folder and add / edit files in it.

If you save a new version of the file and then realize you were wrong, don't worry! You can always recover a previous version of the file on the Dropbox website.

You can download Dropbox from this link.

Using Dropbox is remarkably easy and there are several tutorials on the net. This section of elteaching.com offers you some guidance on basic aspects of dropbox:

1) Sharing a folder with a colleague.