You can call your folders anything, but I wanted simple words that I didn’t have to think about much. On my hard drive, I have two overarching categories. Inbox Zero uses a simple organizational principle for email. When you can go out on the web to find anything, you have to decide what’s essential or not. Most people have trouble remembering what they have and whether it’s worth keeping. This is easy to do in Google Docs or on your computer. One more suggestion: Try creating an index document of all the files you have. If folders are tough, give them the same prefix for their filename, such as “Project123_.” This ensures they appear together in the alphabetical list of files. Put the document and the spreadsheet in a folder together. For example, say you have a word processing document with an embedded chart. 2022, 2021, 2020), then anything you make, drop it in that folder. The truth is, organizing by topic results in a huge mess of folders and files. This presumably made it easier to find with a few files. In the old days, people organized content by topic. Keeping track of it can be quite difficult. Many of create an amazing amount of content each year. To ease my mind, I have relied on one or both of these tips below. Easier systems are those that don’t expect me to remember where I put stuff. Organizing files and folders since I was a youngster, I have found that the easier the system, the better. How can you avoid this? Take advantage of any one of the following techniques. This results in a catastrophic data loss. I’ve seen some computers’ hard drives fail under the strain. Scenario #3: Save to DesktopĪ common scenario, this one involves people putting all their files on the desktop of their device. Instead, they were creating a visual archive. How many times have you seen someone snapping pictures of their computer screen at work? They weren’t documenting a heinous email. When they need the content of the file, they scroll through the Photos app, zooming in as needed. Instead of saving a file to a specific location, they snap a photo of it. Some see Google/Apple Photos apps offer a better, visual way of content management. Scenario #2: Snap a Photo with Your Smartphone It was almost easier to go back to the source and save the item again than to move it to the top of the list (chronological sort). In one situation, a teacher completing the Texas Reading Academy online saved her documents to the default Download folder, so that there were soon hundreds of files to sort through. Before I share an approach and digital tools that make sense, let’s revisit a few that don’t. But such solutions to file management problems can backfire. Some may argue that whatever works, that’s what you do. Here are a few common scenarios I have personally seen. Lacking digital organizational skills, educators and students resort to other approaches. When they need to locate it again, who knows? It’s too easy to create a file wherever they may be on their device or the cloud, then forget about it. The fact is, they lack the mental schema for organizing digital files into folders. I have seen it firsthand on the desktops of teachers, directors, and colleagues in K-12. The problem isn’t only with college students. The concept of file folders and directories…is gibberish to many modern students. Key FindingsĬollege professors are encountering a growing problem with their students. Let’s take a look at some ways you can improve your file management skills.įirst, let’s review findings from a The Verge article, File Not Found by Monica Chin. However, the advent of cloud storage and obscure file saving protocols confuse many. Those experiences, beginning at age 13, have served me well. I spent most of my time at the command line, typing in text commands to copy, move, and delete files and folders. Having grown up organizing files and folders on floppy disks and hard drives, I can find most things. “I hate Google, I can’t ever find anything,” says a colleague (name withheld).
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