An important disctinction in Dropbox – allow others to read only OR edit/delete files`?

Dropbox is a wonderful file-sharing tool which I use with my students (they have no choice).

Mostly they share their project files with me, which ensure its backed up to the cloud, and sometimes I share papers with them from my collection. This had become easier last year with a simple control click to enable sharing.

However, sharing folders has no granularity in permissions – when I use the “Share This Folder” option in Dropbox, I am enabling full access sharing. and my students can edit, remove and even delete files! There is no middle ground.

They are a careful lot, I have backups and there is a 30-day revision history to correct errors so its pretty safe still. Still, best avoided by simply using the “Share Dropbox Link” option instead. This makes files read only.

Are you sharing files correctly?

Visiting students surf with EduRoam!

Gladys Chua, back for a couple of week from her Bachelors of Marine Science Programme at James Cook University, Townsville is online in NUS today, via EduRoam.

This service is available to staff and students from the international research and education community at participating institutions.

So Gladys, who is here to work on some matters for the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore logged in with her JCU account. So there was no need for me to set her up with a guest account through NUS’ Visitor Account Portal.

Pretty neat!

See http://www.eduroam.org for details.