Getting Extra Dropbox Space Free

Since I started using it, Dropbox has become absolutely invaluable to me. (See my earlier post for an introduction to the joys of Dropboxing). It makes it difficult to remember a time when I had to bring a USB flash drive around everywhere with me and pass it around to share lesson plans and whiteboard files with my colleagues. Now, if I save a file into my Dropbox, I know it will be available the next day- even if I do not have access to my own laptop. It even saves different versions of files to avoid the nightmare saving over your own work scenario.

Anyway, if you are running out of space in your free Dropbox account (and the average teacher would probably find it difficult to justify the expense of a paid account) then there are a couple of ways you can get a few extra bytes of storage quite easily.

Social media connections

Go to this link (you will need to then log into your account) and you will be presented with a list of tasks, such as liking Dropbox on Facebook, that will earn you extra free space.

Refer-a-friend

Log into your Dropbox account and look for this icon:

You can then recommend Dropbox to your friends and colleagues (I am sure they will be grateful) and earn yourself some free storage space.

Exciting blog presentations

Uploading individual pictures of children's work is time consuming and might end up creating a long page that is a chore to scroll through. In this post, I hope to share a few easy ways in which you can make easy presentations of children's work.

Capzles

Upload a bunch of masterpieces to your Capzle account and it will display your photos in a fun, floaty filmstrip. You can scroll through the pictures using the bar at the bottom.  Zoom in on individual pictures by clicking on them. You can also customise your presentation add text and audio to your Capzle. By clicking on 'share' you can get a link to your work, or some code to embed it on your own website or blog. Capzles are best viewed in full screen.This Capzle was created by user 'R2D2', so all credit to him/her.

It was very easy and free to create an account.

Animoto

If you are feeling really adventurous, or want to impress with your slideshow, then look no further than Animoto. You upload the files for the slideshow, and it creates a really exciting video with lots of dramatic animation. When I made my slideshow, it took a while processing, but the results were worth the wait. Here is an example Animoto for you to gawp in wonder at. This time it is my own creation:

Animoto takes a little bit of setting up to start with as you have to register for a free educator account (or put up with the extremely limited capabilites of the standard free account- and why would you do that?)