Screenshot by @topgold on Audioboo.
I THINK IT IS WISE to back up content and while listening to Big Rik explain his success with caddies and enclosures, I recapped some of my lessons on storage for Audioboo listeners.
Briefly, I've picked up old hard drives from discarded laptops and desktops, scraped them clean, and I'm now using them to store thematic content. One theme is the rich media by year (photographs, videos and audio clips). I'm also saving one hard drive for each child for each major life period. I've one for Mia from birth to junior infants and a separate one for Dylan covering his changes through those time periods. I've got a separate storage device for every year I've taught. They started minimalist and now include scans or document photos of student work through the years. I expect to find the work of the next Steve Jobs among some of that storage.
But the most elegant thing I do is save all my core content onto a micro SD card that I often carry in my pocket. That 32GB card could let me transport myself into a third level or corporate environment and present material relevant to any of the modules I currently teach.
The material on that 32GB card (screenshot summary above) is also dynamically backed up to CrashPlan Pro, a service recommended to me by Jochen Lillich. Its iron-clad functionality makes it well worth its subscription price.
Time will tell whether I've a durable back-up strategy. I wonder if anyone visiting might comment on how I could improve my back-up practises.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative multimedia in the Limerick School of Art & Design where he generates an unending ribbon of video minutes every year.]
