How to Organize Your Audios and eBooks
I’ve discussed how we should organize our homeschool curriculum in the 31 Days to a Better Planned Homeschool series but what about your digital files like audios and eBooks? You need to have a back up system to store your files, if you’re like me, you love collecting audios and free eBooks, I buy a lot of digital products to save on shipping to Canada. If you’re computer hard drive dies, you will cry at the lost of all of your eBooks and files.
Back up your computer
First and foremost, ensure that you are backing up your computer. There are too many things that are on your computer that you treasure, your pictures, videos and of course your homeschool curriculum, audios and eBooks.
You cannot lost these, it will cost you a lot of time and effort to try to recover them, and it will be an even bigger nightmare if they’re lost. Grab an external hard drive or two, use a cloud service like Dropbox or Drive or burn everything to CDs. I’ve had a friend that had her external hard drive die, so now she has two. I prefer to use Drive
Track your files
Record what you currently have, I purchased curriculum through an eBook bundle last year and completely forgot what I had available to me this year. Some really wonderful stuff. But that’s just our nature we jump at the sale and then it never gets used because you forgot it.
I then started to keep track of my curriculum and this year, the only thing I had to purchase was half a level of Singapore math and a science workbook to go along with the Apologia book I had borrowed from a friend, something I would never have been able to afford on my own.
Organize your files
Do not dump all of your resources into a folder named homeschool. Yeah, that’s what I did my first year. Now I can’t find anything because there’s just so many files to go through. I divided everything up into subjects and then seasonal topics, and then by type of resources. So all of my lapbooks are in one place and my notebooking pages are in one place since I use those the most.
Along with the title of the ebook, I also added grades to them, this makes it super easy to find things when I need something for my 1st grader. I’m a digital file junkie, I collect freebies and store them away because I might need them later on. This is why I need a system.
Use a printable or an excel sheet, but whatever you do, keep track of what you have on hand. It’s a great way to save money and put it to good use.
You’ll also want to check out the other 26 bloggers in this series as well and join our Homeschool Tips 4 Moms Facebook group if you’d like to connect with other homechooling mothers.
Back up your computer
First and foremost, ensure that you are backing up your computer. There are too many things that are on your computer that you treasure, your pictures, videos and of course your homeschool curriculum, audios and eBooks.
You cannot lost these, it will cost you a lot of time and effort to try to recover them, and it will be an even bigger nightmare if they’re lost. Grab an external hard drive or two, use a cloud service like Dropbox or Drive or burn everything to CDs. I’ve had a friend that had her external hard drive die, so now she has two. I prefer to use Drive
Track your files
Record what you currently have, I purchased curriculum through an eBook bundle last year and completely forgot what I had available to me this year. Some really wonderful stuff. But that’s just our nature we jump at the sale and then it never gets used because you forgot it.
I then started to keep track of my curriculum and this year, the only thing I had to purchase was half a level of Singapore math and a science workbook to go along with the Apologia book I had borrowed from a friend, something I would never have been able to afford on my own.
Organize your files
Do not dump all of your resources into a folder named homeschool. Yeah, that’s what I did my first year. Now I can’t find anything because there’s just so many files to go through. I divided everything up into subjects and then seasonal topics, and then by type of resources. So all of my lapbooks are in one place and my notebooking pages are in one place since I use those the most.
Along with the title of the ebook, I also added grades to them, this makes it super easy to find things when I need something for my 1st grader. I’m a digital file junkie, I collect freebies and store them away because I might need them later on. This is why I need a system.
Use a printable or an excel sheet, but whatever you do, keep track of what you have on hand. It’s a great way to save money and put it to good use.
Get the How to Organize Your Audio and eBooks Printable Here >>
Follow along in my 31 Days to a Better Planned Homeschool series.
You’ll also want to check out the other 26 bloggers in this series as well and join our Homeschool Tips 4 Moms Facebook group if you’d like to connect with other homechooling mothers.