Conventions

I try to keep these tech tips something relevant and hopefully cross platform and a tip! I think of these tips as little shortcuts or processes that can simplify what we do as tech enhanced educators. Often, we can spend a lot of time managing the technology and that can interfere with the big focus of all this which is the teach! Often we Ereader teaching things that aren't tech they are some other content. So he are two tips to managing information that I have found helpful:

Conventions, or Standards are rules that we use in grammar and writing to help cue people as to what we are doing. For instance if I put an ! At the end of a sentence you know I really mean it! Conventions that I use with student projects include the following naming of files:

#lastname,firstname????.ext

The students replaced the number sign (hashtag) with their class period and the question marks refer to their own name or information in the file name. By doing this, when students submit their assignment in a shared network drive or save it to a shared folder on DropBox, Google Drive or Skydrive, I can sort the whole list and I have them separated by class, and alphabetically by last name. This saves hours of searching and hunting for files and matching things up. Especially when your school grading system doesn't connect to your online/digital submission tool.

I use the following date format at the beginnnng of all my documents

2103-04-23

I then include whatever relevant file information I want. I learned this when Picasa started prepending this to my photos as they were I imported. While getting my science bachelor's I had gotten used to the standard scientific format for dates: 2013-apr-23 or 2013-IV-23 which is standard globally, but doesn't sort well on a computer, namely January is sorted after April by the computer who is using alphabetical sorting. By using the format above you get perfect chronological sorting. The 'last modified' or 'created on' data associated can be inaccurate when you move files from one external hard drive to another. So I have begun adding the date I created it at the beginning of all my documents to allow me to sort them.

What are some of your strategies for arranging and sorting files in our new age with massive numbers of files to manage? Post them in the comments!

Posted with Blogsy