Day 15 – Skydrive application versus the Skydrive app

A Windows 8 Tablet for Teaching and Learning - Day 15

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Yesterday, I wrote about the Skydrive app that is included as part of Windows 8 and is available from the Windows 8 Start screen. What the Skydrive app allows you to do is access your Skydrive files but ONLY when connected to the Internet. Even given this limitation the Skydrive app is incredibly useful. 

You will need a Microsoft account to utilize Skydrive. I signed up for my account at outlook.com and you also get other benefits including an email account, contacts, calendar, and access to Office Web Apps. Of course, policies need to be pre-approved for the use of Microsoft accounts with students, just like with Google and Apple accounts. Each school will need to come up with their own policies related to the use of external accounts with students.

The idea behind the Skydrive app is that you have access to your files online but none of these files are stored locally. This has the benefits of not taking up local storage so it is very useful for devices that do not have large hard drives like tablets and mobile phones. It also solves the problem of accessing content when using multiple devices like a smartphone, tablet, and PC. Store the files in the cloud and have access to the Skydrive files from all devices.

For schools, students having access to a shared device but keeping files stored in the cloud allows for a clean way of keeping student data in their own separate accounts. Another advantage is being able to share devices easily between students (a budget saving plus). When using the Internet connected Skydrive app you can open files directly from Skydrive, make editing changes, and then save the file directly back to Skydrive. It works similar to a network share drive except you are saving to the cloud. The problem is that if you do not have Internet access you cannot access any of the files on Skydrive with the “app”.  No Connection = Out of Luck.

For many students this will work fine as long as there is an Internet connection but some users will want to have access to files when offline and that is where the Skydrive application comes in.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could download your Skydrive files to your local computer/tablet so you could access and edit them anywhere? even if you do not have an Internet connection? The dream would be the next time you re-connect to the Internet the files you changed and saved locally could be “re-synced” back up to Skydrive. Well, time to wakeup, you’re not dreaming, you can.  This is exactly what the Skydrive application can do. 

Because the x86 version of Windows 8 has the dual personality of being able to run both Windows 8 apps AND full x86 applications Microsoft has developed the Skydrive application that runs from the “Desktop side” of the Samsung Ativ 500T tablet. This is a benefit of the x86 compatible Clover Trail processor that my tablet uses. 

Just a cautionary note, I do not believe that the Windows RT version of Windows 8, that runs on the ARM processor, can use the full Skydrive application. If you find out differently let me know as I do not have access to a Windows RT tablet to test this.

What is really exciting for me is that once I downloaded and installed the Skydrive application on my tablet I had access to all my Skydrive files. You are given the choice if you want to sync all files from Skydrive locally or be more selective and only sync certain folders. It took a few minutes to sync my files, the more you have the longer the initial sync will take.

Another benefit is that you can access the all local Skydrive files using the familiar File Explorer interface that has been a part of Windows for years.
 

Just like you can save a file to My Documents you can now save a file to Skydrive\Documents on the local tablet or PC. The benefit to this method is that you can access the files locally (even without Internet access) and the edit files then save it back to the Skydrive folder on the local drive. Once you get back to a location that has an Internet connection the changed files are automatically synced back up to Skydrive in the cloud. This only works for files saved to the local Skydrive folder.

Another benefit is that you essentially have a backup copy with you at all times (on the local Skydrive folder on the tablet or PC AND on Skydrive in the cloud). 

Keep on Learning,

Dr. Grissom

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.