November 10, 2008

Dear 4th-7th Grade Parents,

 We will be conducting USB 2.0 Flash drive (jump drive) lessons in computer class beginning the week of December 1st. This will help familiarize students with creating, saving, opening and backing up documents between school and home.

A USB drive is an external storage device that has replaced the floppy disk. The USB drive incorporates solid state technology. This means that it does not have any moving parts like the floppy disk. A floppy disk could only hold 1.44 megabytes of information. Standard USB drives today hold from 512 to 16,000 megabytes or .5 to 16 megabytes of information. There are 1,000 megabytes (MB) in 1 gigabyte (GB).

 What size USB drive will work for the school environment? Anywhere from 512MB to 1 GB drive would work or no higher than $15.00. Students do not need to be carrying around high dollar drives.

 Please be sure your student has their name on their drive. A lanyard is also very handy. Please have your student begin bringing their drive to school during the week of December 1st. They do not need to bring it in before that unless they need it for a project.

 Mrs. Branch
Elementary Computer Instructor