Back to School

Seems like yesterday when kids were doing their own rendition of the song “School’s out for Summer”. But here we are. Some already back to school, with my son actually having just a few more days left before the start of his middle school career. I think he’s prepared for the most part. After all, he knows what a flash drive is for goodness sake, so I’m hoping that’ll at least win him some favor among with the computer teachers.

I’m kinda disappointed I didn’t see the ol’ customized flash drives for sale at Wal-Mart dag nabbit! We had this long list of back to school supplies we had to purchase, and wally’s world did a sweet job of having all the products organized neatly together so you don’t have to wander throughout the store in search of a size 7 art brush. But no flash drives! Arrggh! Yes, of course, I am biased and a bit ahead of the “curve” maybe. However, if we’re going to be getting our young students involved with laptops and computer training, doesn’t it seem like common sense to include instruction on how to use peripheral, added value devices like a flash drive in the mix? I’ll answer that with a “Yes!”

Heck, well over a year ago, a pioneering talent over at Belle Fourche High School decided it was time to include class materials and student handbooks on a mobilizing, earth-friendly flash drive. To our knowledge, he’s still one of the few on the planet offering this advanced customized flash drive solution in the K12 classroom. So why don’t we have more schools issuing such a “seems like a no brainer” solution to students at the onset of the new school year? Ironically enough it comes down to education. It’s hard to know what you’re missing out on if you don’t even know what you’re missing. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to spread the good news about school flash drives to teachers, administrators, superintendents, folks within the department of education. We’re doing our best to get the word out, to help inform those able to make the decision to leverage the power of flash drives as a way to enhance the educational process as well as keep students at the forefront of technology, preparing them for the rapidly-evolving work climate.

If we had it our way, every K12 classroom and certainly every Postsecondary institution would be welcoming students to the 2008 school year with flash drives in hand. And the drives would include at the bare minimum a preload solution that eliminated the need for the millions of dollars in printed materials that is undoubtedly going to end up in a trashcan within a few weeks. Schools could include a welcome video, links to the school website, a school calendar, school policy guide, links to online resources, extracurricular activity applications and guidelines and more. The fact is the sophistication and/or size of the preloaded content is only limited by a school’s imagination (and of course how many megabytes of storage is available on the flash drive). That said, we’re starting to see more and more 2 and 4GB requests. That is indeed a tremendous amount of storage capability, especially if the files are mostly text based. Music and video files gobble up space much more quickly, however. So it’s important to consider how your school may get the best use out of the flash drive…and how students may wish to use the flash drive over the course of the school year.