President's Report	by James McConville
Island Report	by Mike Ireland
Live and In Colour...From the Internet	by Wayne Ulian
Catalyst Conference May 12-13, 2006, Whistler, BC	by Kevin Ambroe
Classroom Jeopardy	by Jolene Mergens and Chris Rozitis
USB Flash Drives	by Dennis Wong
Web 2.0: An Educator's Guide	by James McConville
Demystifying Graduate Portfolios	by Shelley Wilcox
Online Discussions in Biology 12	by Tracy Kimoto
One to One Wireless Writing	by James McConville
CUE-Van Meeting April 27, 2006	by CUE-Van Executive
Fall Conference 2006: Teaching to the Multiple Literacies	by CUE Executive
Call for Presenters	by CUE Executive
Get Published: become a CUE newsletter contributor	by CUE Executive
Renewing your CUEBC membership	by James McConville

USB Flash Drives

By Dennis Wong

USB Flash Drives, Thumb Drives, Jump Drives, USB Drives or USB Thingy, whatever you want to call these portable drives, they are a great device and a must have.  I bought my first drive for school in January 2003.  For an Information Technology teacher it was a great way to transfer files from school to home and vice versa.  It is convenient, easy to use, portable, and has more storage capacity than a floppy.   I could take my marking home and easily transfer any demo files I was working on at home to work.  When I first bought the drive the cost of a USB drive was approximately $1 per 1 MB but I got a steal of a deal and paid only $100 for a 128 MB drive.  How the times have changed, now for as low as $90 you can buy a 2 GB Flash drive that is nearly the size of 3 CD’s.

One problem I encountered transferring files on my USB drive is keeping track of where I made changes and where the latest file is stored.  A simple solution is to use Windows Briefcase to synchronize the files.  Create a new Briefcase on the drive by choosing File > New > Briefcase.  Copy the file from your desktop to the Briefcase on your USB drive.  Make changes to your file either on your desktop or on your USB drive.  When you are ready to synchronize your files, open the Briefcase and choose Briefcase > Update All…, a dialog box opens showing which files need to updated and where, click Update, and your files are now in synch.

USB Flash drives are great for transferring and backing up files but they are also being used to run applications.  Want to use Firefox at work but it’s not supported at school?  You can download Portable Firefox and run it directly from your USB Flash Drive.  Portable Firefox can be downloaded from http://portableapps.com.  Other free applications available at the same site are Portable Openoffice.org, a word processing application, Portable GIMP, a portable photo editing application, and Portable VLC Media Player, a portable media player.  Many more applications can be found by doing a search on the Internet.  I even saw some students playing Doom off of their drives!