Managing Files
	Ever had the experience of working hard on a document only to discover later that you can't find it? It happens to everyone, so knowing a bit about how to organize your files will prove beneficial in the long run. Microsoft products all seem to save documents in a specific location, usually, "My Documents" or "My pictures." This is fine until you realize the file that you have create called "Chapter 1" for your science lesson has just been saved over the file called "Chapter 1" for social studies. In a school setting, teachers frequently share a computer with a colleague, or even with students. This makes it even more important to develop your own organization so that others do not save over your work. It's time to get organized!
1. Make a list of subjects or topics that you will be teaching. 2. Create a single folder with your last name and grade level or subject. For example, Terry-4, or Terry-Math 8 3. Create separate folders for the subjects or topics from in step #1. 4. As you generate materials and documents, save them to the appropriate folder. There will be times when you will need to transport a file from one computer to another, for example, home to school or school to home. To accomplish this you may need to use an external storage device such as a disk drive or CD-Burner. Think of the media (disk, CD, flash drive) as a briefcase, a location for transporting documents. When you get to your destination and insert the media, copy the document to the computer's hard drive by simply dragging the icon to the desktop. DO NOT OPEN the document on the storage media. Edit your document and save the changes, then copy it back to the storage media using one of three methods: SAVE AS: While the application is still open choose Save As from the File menu and navigate to the external media. SEND TO: Quit the application, right click on the document icon and choose Send to...and select the media. DRAG & DROP: Simply drag the icon from the desktop on to the icon for the external device. For more information on managing your files, read the document called "Managing Files" located in your Blackboard course. To learn more about the windows environment, read "DTPExplore" also located within the Blackboard course.