File+Management

FILE MANAGEMENT REFLECTION

I am a big filing person – paper and electronic! I have files in clouds, on drives, on shelves & in cabinets. My desk is usually in a fairly ordered manner, however being a mummy of two young children that works from a home office means that often I find evidence of my children’s creations and little surprises on my desk which means sometimes it becomes cluttered. My daily routine before bed (I work from a home office) is to clear my desk ready for the next day.
 * Awareness**

I do remember though when I first discovered cloud computing and first started using box.net to keep all my files organised. I checked it out on a recommendation of a valued colleague who was using it to store his personal work. It's a free service so I was sold based on that alone! I found it very user friendly so much so I could just jump in and start using. I particularly liked that I could set up several folders within folders.
 * Exploration**

Filing and organising is a BIG part of my offline life, so my digital life is no different. Filing and organising really is a big part of how I keep my life flowing fairly smoothly. It is a very left brained process, but with the hectic pace of my family life it really does keep everyone on the same page and armed with the knowledge of where everyone and everything can be accessed. All the files I don't want others to access is saved on my external hard drive in several folders. I have two back ups of this drive which are updated weekly. One is kept onsite here, and one is kept off site at my husband's office. My cloud files are mostly accessible by others and are more my “work” files.
 * Filtration**

I wasn't always a big filing person, however years ago when I started my very first business I found that I just couldn't keep myself organised and I always felt stressed. I then lost some real important documents, which cost me financially – HUGE WAKE UP MOMENT – Time to get organised. From that point forward I've filed and organised on almost a daily basis. I found having children made this a mandatory process for me to keep myself on track and organised.
 * Learning**

Box.net in particular has become a big part of both my personal and professional life. Personally I use it to store my digital files, but it's also become a place for my children to access files too. Because I travel away a great deal for my work, I often place audio files in box.net for my children to access each night I am away so they can still have me read to them before they go to bed. This is a commitment that I have made to them – that I will read a chapter of their books every night before bed. So I pre-record these, name them the date they are to be listened to and place them in a folder on box.net. My kids then download the appropriate file out of their folder on box.net and listen to me read before they go to bed. Of course I store all my personal photos, documents etc online too. Not all on box.net some of these are stored on Facebook of course! ;p Professionally, I have folders setup that are public access folders relating to the pedagogy coaching and early childhood education work that I do on box.net. I add to these regularly, and I encourage clients to access these. I even have an OSU folder on there from the guest speaking and workshops I have provided for the Department of Human Development and Family Science, Early Childhood Education classes. :)
 * Personal & Professional Application**

I love that box.net really allows me to share my files with others around the world. I love being connected globally and I believe that this is when knowledge is at its most powerful – when it's being shared. This is probably why I have really taken to Pinterest so quickly because it is a much more visual representation of my files/ideas/bookmarks etc and it is so much more user friendly than Diigo which I also use for online bookmarking. On reflection, I use a great deal of online services to file, organise and share – I have Diigo, Box.net, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wordpress just to name a few! What I would like to work on though over the next few months is streamlining these to use them more effectively through my professional life.
 * Sharing and Reflecting**