Are your lesson plans and teaching materials backed up? How about your documents, pictures and music? If your only copy is on your computer's hard drive you could be just one lightning bolt, electrical power surge, or spilled drink from wiping out all your hard work. If this is your situation, Carbonite may be the answer. I don't often endorse a product, but I feel this may be "essential teaching gear." 

I taught for 31 years, I won the National Lesson Plan Contest in 1998, and I currently work in a school technology department. I know the work it takes to create lessons and I also know the complete despair that happens when that work is lost.

"Not me," you say. I have my stuff backed up. Well, how recently did you do the backup? Last week, last month, last summer? Is your backup on CD's, zips and floppies scattered all over your house (and school). My experience is that teachers think they have things backed up, until it comes time to restore their lost data -- then it's a (usually) devastating reality check.

Then, how about my nightmare story from this summer? I had all my data backed up to a second (usb) hard drive. I knew thunder storms were in the area so I unplugged my machine from both the electricity socket and the cable. A lightning bolt struck in my neighbor's back yard and the static electricity took out everything. (Did you know that if your computer sits on a carpet it's on the biggest conductor of static electricity in your house? I do now!) I did everything right and still got nailed!

If I knew then what I know now I would have had nothing to worry about. Carbonite is a safe, online backup system for all your computer's data (documents, pictures, music) with unlimited capacity. All your data being uploaded or downloaded is totally encrypted. It runs in the background and does not slow your computer down, in fact it only runs its backup when you are not working on your computer -- step away for five minutes and Carbonite uses that "down time" to back up what you're currently working on. If you use a laptop, it backs up your stuff no matter where you happen to be. Better yet, it's off site so even if disaster strikes your house your data is safe. You can even try it for free for 15 days -- with no credit card information required! Then if you subscribe it costs as little as $3.75 per month. (See the prices by clicking here.)

If your computer goes down and gets repaired or you buy an new computer, all you do is tell Carbonite to restore your files and you're back to normal in no time. -- Jim Neff

*Note: Carbonite only works with high-speed access (cable, DSL). If you are on a dial-up connection, I'm sorry to say, your connection is not fast enough for this service.