Spring Cleaning!

It's that time of year!

NOT this kind of cleaning!

Staff, as we roll through the last few weeks of the year, I know that everyone is super busy, with track meets, and Graduation, and many other "end of school" events on our schedules.

However, wanted to take the opportunity to ask you if wouldn't mind taking some time to do some "Spring Cleaning" of your files and folders.

NOT this kind of cleaning either!

A few years ago, when I was still working in Chamberlain (Obviously), we had a staff meeting the last week of the school year and our school's technology "consultant" (guy who came and helped out the technology director with network management) took us through what was exactly being hosted on the School's Server.

It was astounding.  Over 70% of the memory, saved on the school's computer was pictures and images.  He then told us that we had the summer (3 months), to get our personal pictures and images off of the server or they would be deleted for us.

I haven't looked, but I would guess that there "quite a bit" of memory on our server dedicated to personal photos, as well.

I would recommend that if they are not school related, you look to move these images either to your home computer (via a flash drive), or uploading them to a cloud service like Dropbox, Google Web Albums, or Microsoft's Sky Drive.  That way, you would be able to access your pictures from any device that can access the web.

Another thing you can look to do, is to delete any "OLD" files that you will never use again.  For Example, here is a photo of my "H Drive" or Server Folder:

If you notice, there is a folder called "Newsletter" in there.  That is where I have kept all the copies of all the Elkton School Newsletters, for this school year.  Here is a snapshot of what that folder looks like on the inside:

Inside each Month's folder is all the files, and news and notes that each teacher sent me for that month...along with the completed newsletter.  

Now, The only file that I think I may actually need for next school year is the "Template" that I use for putting it together.  So I plan on going into this folder and deleting the previous copies of the newsletter.

This is what I'm asking you to do.... Go into your H Drive (And, your C drive...and your Desktop, while you're at it) and delete any extraneous files that you don't need anymore.  If you want to keep a file because you "may" need it, that is completely fine.  I'm just saying that: if there is no need to keep it anymore, why save it?

Example:  When I taught PE in Chamberlain, I used to do a lot of "Round Robin" style tournaments when it came to individual sports (like table tennis or something).  I would keep track of who played who, and the scores on an Excel spreadsheet.  Well, at the end of the year.... did I really need the spreadsheet of the student's Table Tennis Results?  NO.  So, I would delete it.

Example:  Photos I used in my "Technology in Warfare" presentation.  This will be deleted.

If you would take the time to do some "Spring Cleaning" of your files and folders, of both your H Drive, but also your "My Documents" and "My Pictures", it will free up memory for you.  The more memory a computer has available to it, the better it runs.  (This is why today's computers run better than those of 10 years ago...they have more RAM and larger GB Hard Drives).  The more memory you use, the more "clunky" things run.

I will also being doing my part, and "cleaning up" many extraneous files and users on the Server.  There are staff members still listed on there that haven't worked here in 3 years...and students from quite a ways back, too.

Thank you for your help and cooperation!  

And, IF you need Help in learning how to delete your files

...Do Not Hesitate To Ask Me!  

I would be glad to help you.  That's my Job!  I'd rather help someone that is unsure, than have that someone either: not do something out of fear, or do it incorrectly and then be upset.