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Saving and sharing your group’s learning

As you work through the modules, there are two different kinds of learning that you will want to record and keep:

  • Your own individual learning - you can do this through using the My learning notes template to record your personal learning. You can write these notes on paper or electronically on your computer. There is no need to share this with anyone else, unless you think it would be useful.

  • Your group’s learning - we suggest that you set up a group Building Stronger Community Organisations folder for the learning and plans you produce together. You can do this on paper, but we suggest that the best way to share documents between the committee is by saving your Building Stronger Communities folder online. By doing this, all of your committee members will be able to access the documents.

Why store your learning and plans in this way?

It is important to keep a record of the work that your group does within the modules.This is so that you can use these things in your day to day work or when you are reflecting on how well your group is doing in achieving your aims.

 Saving all your learning and plans will help you to:

  • Make your organisation strong and effective

  • Make sure that your committee members can access the documents they need

  • Support new committee members

  • Help you with planning, delivering activities and evaluation

  • Help you to make strong funding bids

  • Be more effective at influencing services and campaigning for change

  • Make sure that all of your work is saved centrally and is not only on one computer

How to organise, store and share what you produce within your group

It's no use putting the effort into using the modules unless you gather and store your materials in a way that your committee can use it practically in the future.

To save your documents you can either:

  • Download the exercises and plans you make using the modules and print these to keep as a set of paper files or

  • Save everything in an online space like Google drive or Dropbox.This is fairly easy to do if people in your group are comfortable using a computer. If not, then ask someone to help you with this, for example,a community development worker, or other staff or volunteers who support your group.  

Google drive

If you use gmail, then you can use google drive to store and share your files online. It is free for light users and you should be able to save and share all the materials in the modules without any cost.  It is possible to share online folders with people who don’t have a gmail address, but they may need to set up a google account (they will need an email address although this doesn’t have to be a gmail address).

To set up a shared google drive:

  • Log into your gmail account

  • Go to your inbox and click on the nine dots at the top right hand side

  • Choose drive

  • When you are in your gmail inbox, if you click the nine dots at the top right corner and select Drive

  • Select My Drive from the list at the left hand side

  • You can now right click to add folders or to share folders with others

There’s more information here.

DropBox

Dropbox provides a way to store and share your files online. It is free for light users and you should be able to save and share all the materials in the modules without any cost. It does mean that everyone who wants to access the files will have to set up a dropbox account (and you will need an email to do this)

To set up a dropbox account:

  • Go to www.dropbox.com

  • Select Sign In (top right hand corner)

  • Select Create and Account

  • Enter your name, email address and choose a password

  • Select your plan - for the free plan, click the small link at the bottom of the page Continue with 2GB DropBox basic plan

  • You should now be able to start using dropbox and sharing your files with all your committee members

There’s more information here.

Once you’re setup on your chosen platform, these are the folders you’ll need to create

  • Set up a folder for each of the modules that you plan to do.

  • In each of the module folders we suggest you the have the following folders to help you store and get easy access to the things you need.

    • Module factsheets

    • Module exercise recording forms

    • Module planning templates where you have noted the action you will take as group based on the module learning (eg The Community Conversation Template or Good Governance Template) 

Some tips for using online storage

  •  Make sure that your folders are only shared with your group members

  • More than one person can view and edit a document at the same time

  • If you work online, then your document will be saved automatically on a regular basis, but this can cause mistakes, for example if you delete large chunks of a document and the deletions are then saved

  • If you accidentally delete a file or a folder, you should be able to find this in your deleted items.

  • Your files and folders are usually backed up through these platforms, so you should be able to retrieve lost data.

  • If you are working on a document online, you may find that some of the functions don’t work, so if that is the case, you can download the file and work offline and upload it when you are ready

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