Page 7 - Electronic Media

Miracles of technology &
Technology – assisted tools plus
a word of thanks

Back in 2009, when my students and I were discussing the
possibility of bringing out an e-book on Informatics, there arose
a discussion on how materials sourced from different books,
libraries and on-line sources could be collected, compiled and
brought out in the form of a CD.

Since my students were all digital natives, they were familiar
with the nuances of the computer. Thus we set about using
asynchronous and synchronous forms of communication. All of
us created email addresses and we would collect materials from
different sources and mail them to one central email address. We
would send the revised mail taking care to mark it as ‘revised’
with a specific date to show that it was more current than the
previous one.

Fast forward to 2010, we began to tinker with Dropbox. We
found out that it made a tremendous difference in our storage
and updating capabilities. Dropbox is one of the simplest forms
of a file-synchronization tool. Whatever and wherever your
computer is, Dropbox is on hand to allow access to your files
and that too very quickly and easily. Easy integration with iOS
devices is another feather in its cap. We also found out that
Dropbox made it to one of the most innovative products of that
year with BBC endorsing it. An e-book on Studies in Advertising
was the result.