Introduction

Recap what the children remember about emailing from the last two lessons. How can you be safe when communicating with others online?  

 

In the last lesson we talked a little bit about data storage and sizes of data when we looked at attachments. How can data be stored? Where can we save files?  Discuss what the children know about data storage devices, if you can, collect some examples of storage devices, old and new, to look at and compare:

 

 

Which one holds the most data? Why do you think that?

Establish that the size of the physical device is now no longer an indication of how much data it holds. If possible, compare something like a 1.4mb floppy disk with a 8GB SD card. Floppy disks were common in the 1980s for storing computer data, for example, computer games came on them. Today we use SD cards in things like digital cameras to store the photos. How many of these floppy disks do you think you would need to have the same amount of data storage space as the SD card?  Almost 6000! (5851)

 

You can see comparisons and definitions of units of data storage here:

http://www.techterms.com/help/data_storage_units_of_measurement

 

And if you didn’t watch this in the last lesson, give this video from BBC Bitesize a look (see section 2 on the page)

How is data stored on a computer?

 

Cloud Storage

So what is cloud storage? Point out that you might have mentioned it but you haven’t shown it to them yet.  This video explains it nicely, but it’s basically saving your data via websites and apps onto servers that could be anywhere in the world. We access our data remotely via the Internet.  

It has the advantage that you can’t break or lose it (like a DVD or USB stick) and you can often access your data from different devices, any place, any time as long as you have an internet connection, so you don’t need to worry about remembering to pick it up (like a DVD or USB stick). 

Most of the major tech firms now offer some kind of cloud storage solution for you to save your files and data online. These are usually on a pay-for-what-you-need basis, allowing you essentially, unlimited amounts of storage space on their servers.

Microsoft has a number of services for cloud storage, but their personal storage option is called OneDrive.

 

Microsoft OneDrive

One Drive can be accessed from the 9 dots (waffle) in the top left of your Office 365 Screen.

 

 

Uploading

Ask the students to try uploading something to their OneDrive, they can use the image they saved or created last week for the attachments task:

Click on Upload > Files and browse your computer for the file you wish to upload. 

 

 

Sharing

As you hover over an uploaded file, the Share button will appear.

 

Click the Share button to add someone's email address for sharing. You also have a number of options for sharing the document (these may vary depending on your organisation's settings). If you click on People you specify can view, you will get other permission options, including whether to allow others to edit the file (more appropriate for written documents). When your choices are complete, click Apply and then Send.

 

 

 

What happens when you share?

When you click Share, the user you have shared the file with will get an email notification that looks a bit like this:

 

 

A link to the file will also appear in the Shared section of their OneDrive.

 

Collaborative Documents

The other big feature of Office 365 is collaborative documents that can be created and saved in the cloud. Ask what does collaborative mean?  This means 'working together', and the brilliant feature of these documents is that more than one person can work on the same document, at the same time, from different devices at any time.

Office 365 offers a variety of apps, but the three main office apps for word processing, spreadsheets and slide presentations are:

 

All of these documents have some great features:

• They are collaborative - lots of people can work on them at the same time, from anywhere!
• They are web based so can be accessed anywhere (with a web connection), you don’t need to carry the file around with you on a USB stick.
• You can also work on the documents offline, and changes will sync to your OneDrive when you're back online.
• They auto-save!!! - There’s no save button, you’ll never lose work again when you forget to save and the computer crashes or you have a power cut, they’ll just be how you left it when you reboot and login again.

 

Creating a document

Creating a new document is easy with OneDrive. When you create a new document it is automatically saved straight into your OneDrive.

In OneDrive click New > Word Document

 

Show how to name it, the basic editing and creation tools: fonts, formatting, tables, inserting images, links etc.

 

 

Sharing your Doc

Word, Powerpoint and Excel allow sharing directly from the document, and it works in exactly the same way as described above, when we shared a document from your OneDrive.

Be sure to tick the Allow editing option when sharing during this task.

 

Choose someone in the class to help you demonstrate and make sure they are logged in already. Share your document with them and ask them to open it, remind them that they will get an email but that it will also be in the Shared section of their OneDrive. 

Begin writing the first line of a made up story opening (perhaps with a link to your topic or theme), ask your helper to click after your full stop and write the next line, continue to take it in turn once more each. Show how you can edit each others work so that there needs to be trust, respect and a sensible attitude to working together like this.

 

Working together

Close the story document but show how it is now in your OneDrive so you could come back to work on it later, how could that be useful for you? (Home/school working)

Pair the students up randomly around the room and ask them to number themselves 1 and 2. Number 1’s only should create a new document and share it with their partner (number 2) and also share it with you (the teacher) so that you have access to all their work.

Ask them to have a go at replicating your demonstration of writing the opening of a story together:

• Write one sentence each
• Take it in turn
• Don't delete anyone else's writing.

If children have internet access at home, you may ask them to log on at home and see if they can get back to their Drive and their story to add some more to it. 

 

Leaving Feedback

If you want to leave any feedback on their writing, Word 365 has really useful features for leaving comments. You can open a document, highlight some text and leave a comment on it by clicking on Insert > New Comment. 

 

 

You can then leave a linked comment at the side of the page. 

 

 

Students can respond to your comments by clicking on the comment and the reply box.

 

 

Plenary

Recap the main points of the lesson with the following review and questions.

• What does cloud storage mean?
• What are the advantages of cloud storage?
• Are there any disadvantages?
• What is a collaborative document?
• How are they different to traditional offline documents?
• Who was able to work successfully with a partner on a collaborative document?
• Did you have any problems?