Ready set, reload my files, good to go …

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I have written about Ryan S. in the past as he is a student who does amazing things with technology and in how he thinks/problem solves. He impressed me yesterday again during Open House. He came into the computer lab, logged in, plugged in his USB flash drive and proceeded to drag over all of his files from last year, and the year before. As Ryan finished copying the files, he said ” Now I am ready”.

He is onto the fact that each year all of his files are deleted by our Network Department. While we have had some light discussion on how we could change the practice, nothing ever came of it. In many ways, starting over is a good thing as some students keep a Home Directory much like they do their bedroom closet.  How would I feel if each year I had to start over? Not happy given the fact I have 2 terabytes of storage on my desk for backup plus the server backup. I do not like loosing anything.

I think most of our students live their digital lives without limits to the amount of storage. YouTube and Google do not wipe out everything after 9 months. What are the implications for education with this group of students who are creating their digital dossier? I think we need to allot more space for students to build their learning space so they can retrieve the history of their learning much like we can all look up our web history.

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