Technology Tip Number 17
Store it in Your CyberCloset

Have you ever lost something you saved to a disk?  Ever had your home computer crash?  Pretty annoying to lose everything isn’t it?  Here’s a way to save files so they are accessible anywhere in the world without carrying a disk around or saving them to your computer.

Let’s say you’re at the Community College Library typing your doctoral thesis and you decide you want to save it to work on later.  Oops, you forgot to bring a disk or a flash drive with you.  How are you going to save it? 

Just Email it to Yourself:  
We're starting to see students do this more and more.  All you have to do is access your work email via the internet (sometimes this is called called webmail).  If you don't have a webmail address you can get a free one at:  http://www.hotmail.com    Once you have accessed your webmail you would:

1. Start a new email () and put your own email address in the "TO:" line. 

2. Attach the file you want to email to yourself by clicking on "Attach" or the paper clip symbol 

3. Then just click "Send" and the email will be sitting in your inbox waiting for you with your paper attached.  You can log onto your webmail and access it anytime from anyplace in the world where you have the internet.

By emailing something to yourself you are essentially storing it in cyberspace until you need it.  You don't have to carry it around on a disk or worry about loosing the hard copy.  It just sits there in your email inbox waiting for you.

Keep in mind that many of our students know how to do this.  When they ask you if they can access their email while in class they might just be trying to access their homework so they can print it out. 

PRACTICE ACTIVITY:   Try emailing yourself a copy of an important file you have saved on your computer.  That way you’ll always have a back-up of that file waiting for you in your email in-box.

TO KEEP ON LEARNING:  If you'd like to learn more about using email creatively try searching the internet for:

Email to myself
Effective email use
Email attachments

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