Guideline 16: Save files early and often–and in more than one location
As students work on their digital stories, they should save multiple versions as well as both project
file and the completed story files. We encourage students to save the project file and keep a copy
in a safe place. In almost every digital storytelling workshop, there is at least one participant who
forgets to do this and then loses all of their work. So a guiding principle for digital storytellers is to
save the project file often, especially after making significant changes to the story. We encourage
students to save the project file with a new version number in the file name every so often, as
major new pieces of the story are added.
When saving a digital story file, students should also try to use descriptive names and again, no
spaces. For example, the file name, Martin-Solution-to-Pollution-2012.wp3, includes the name of
the storyteller plus the topic and year that the story was produced. When the final output file is
saved, we recommend that the project file be saved one more time first and then the final output
file be saved in a separate folder where just the final version of the completed story will go.
Separating the locations where the project file and final output files are stored can often prevent
the two files from being mixed up or even accidentally deleted. As another layer of protection, we
also suggest that students save copies of their project files and final output files on a thumb drive,
external hard drive or external website such as Dropbox, www.dropbox.com/.