Week #3 - File Management 101

This week Margie wanted to work on figuring out how to use her flash drive to ferry grade files from school to home and back again. The first quarter has just completed and it is time to set up the new class grading files. Margie uses the same grading program as mine. It is called "Making the Grade" and I recommend it highly. In fact, I talked Margie into taking the plunge and purchasing it. She had the program for an entire year before she "had the time" to learn how to use it. Now that she is moderately comfortable entering grades, we can venture deeper into the depths of the program's abilities. Fundamental to transferring files is a logical naming protocol. Another key element is folder structure. File management is a basic skill that, when practiced from the beginning, saves endless frustration later on.

Our objective this week was to set up her 2nd quarter classes in the grading program so that the files would be easy to manage. It is a trap to vary class file names. For example, Period 2 Life Science then Life Science Period 3. The files are not listed in order and it is confusing for the eye to distinguish between them. For this reason, Margie began each file name with the period number so that they would all be listed in the order that they occur in real time. She created a folder to hold only those class files for the 2nd quarter and finally, created a shortcut on the desktop to that folder for easy file retrieval.

The process of transferring the managed files to the flash drive was a little more of a mysterious matter for her and we will clarify that more as time goes by. For now, Margie has a good foundation in why file management is important and how to set up a file/folder structure that makes sense and is easy to manage.