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March 23, 2006
Web-based file transfer services for students and instructors
Recently a student in an MVCR course was having difficulty sending her final project to her instructor. The project consisted of several video and flash files and was quite large (almost 200 MB). She was hoping to be able to attach the files to a message in the course discussion board, but Moodle (MVCR’s course management system) is configured to allow attachments smaller 2 MB. The attachments were also too large to send via Gmail, or her other email accounts., which usually have a 5 to 10 MB limit.
When she called me for help, I recommended using a web-based file transfer service.
These services are cross platform, easy to use, and free. The sender simply fills out a form, indicating the file to be uploaded and the email of the recipient(s). The recipient receives an email with a link, which when clicked, allows the file to be downloaded. While these services are very easy to use, it does take a long time to upload and download the files. For example, it took me about 10 minutes to upload a 1 GB file.
The student I was helping created a single zip file of her video and flash files and used YouSendIt to send the zip file to her instructor and her classmates.
Here are three free services you might want to try.
YouSendIt
http://www.yousendit.com/
No registration required; 1 GB limit
SendThisFile
http://www.sendthisfile.com/?rc=transferfile
Registration required; no limit for file size
Dropload
http://www.dropload.com/
Registration required; 100 MB limit
Posted by mlindema at March 23, 2006 07:37 AM