OneDrive - My new friend

Sharing information has been easy and simple with Google Drive and Dropbox, however, my organization has adopted Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive for Business to protect data and provide consistency for district, school, faculty, and student communication and collaboration.  While I work on the district level to design and develop online learning, I also teach for our virtual high school - to improve my practice and because working with a class of my own keeps me grounded to the essence of education - students.  This time of year our entire district is focused on End of Course Exams (EOCs), Advanced Placement Exams, and the state achievement tests for elementary and middle schools.  

My AP Art History class is entirely online, no textbook for students to review during this crucial crunch time.  While they can review content from the course and their notes at any time, several students were asking for a timeline to support their study efforts.  I spent two weeks walking back through the course from ancient Mesopotamia through the Renaissance, and into contemporary modern art.  The trick was how to best share the document with students while it was being created, and how to allow for some crowd sourcing of content from the class.  A final consideration was the file size, as we continued to add images of master works the document grew beyond the ability to email through our system.  

Microsoft OneDrive provided the best asynchronous means to upload and share the spreadsheet timeline with my class.  At first I shared the link with them through email, but last night after our most recent synchronous study session using Blackboard Collaborate, I discovered an instant QR code creator right inside the system.  By clicking on the three little dots after a document, and then choosing "Share", one is able to "Get a Link" that can be emailed or embedded in our course.  However, there is a little phone icon after the link and clicking on that icon provides an immediate QR code for either viewing or editing the document.  I can't wait to share this with teachers in our district!