At the beginning of the school year, we were like most parents that received a long list of supplies for school. However, this year on top of the normal school supplies, my new 9th grader received an additional list after the first day of school asking for different types of supplies. One of the items was a 4GB memory stick. For those of you not familiar with a memory stick, it's basically a small USB detachable disk drive that can hold larger amounts of data. Memory sticks are great for moving things from one computer to another, but often get lost as I have found.

With all the cloud computing and cool, free websites out there these days, I feel like a memory stick is sorta "old school" now. I use lots of different tools to move and share data with my day job, but for some reason it just dawned on me recently that my teen could be using some of the same methods to help save money and time. I'm going to list out several "free" ways your teen can save and share their homework.

Dropbox - Dropbox is rapidly becoming my favorite tool to share data. You can visit dropbox and download a small client that will basically allow you to share up to 2GB worth of data for free, but subscribers can get 100GB. It's kinda like having a hard drive anywhere you go except you don't have to remember to bring it with you. With dropbox I can move a file onto a shared folder that makes my files available to me wherever I go. If I want to share the file I can give whomever I want to share my file with a secure URL that allows them to download the file. For teens, this means you can upload you're file to dropbox from your computer then send you're teacher a URL to the file. Teens can also download the dropbox app to have access to their files from their mobile phones as well.

Google Docs - Google Docs is a free online office application that includes a document creator, spreadsheet, presentation and database application. Google docs users can store files they create or upload on their Google account for free. Anywhere that you have access to the internet you can get access to you're docs and make edits. For teens, this means you can edit you're homework using Google Docs then can easily share it out with you're teacher or possibly friends if you're needing some type of collaboration. If you're parents are internet savvy they may find this useful as well since they can check you're homework from anywhere in the world.

Docs - Docs is a joint venture between Microsoft and Facebook that allows Facebook users the ability to create, upload and share documents, spreadsheets & presentations. One of the cool features with docs is that you can invite you're Facebook friends to view, edit or collaborate on you're document. It's very easy to upload existing documents and share them as well. For teens, this means they can have select Facebook friends collaborate or help them with their homework. If you're teen has friended their teacher than they could also share the document with that teacher. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with my teen friending their teacher though?

Zoho - Zoho is another online office suite that's been around for quit a while. Zoho will allow users to upload existing docs, spreadsheets, presentations etc online. In addition to this you can also create new documents, spreadsheets, presentation and save them online. I've found that Zoho works nicely with Google Docs as well which can be a nice bonus. Zoho also offers a mobile app for easy storage, editing and sharing.

There's several more online office suites out there, but these are just a few I've played around with. I'm really loving how most of these also offer an app for smartphones which allow me to view my teen's homework from anywhere I have a mobile connection. This has been great for proof reading or just offering an opinion on my teen's homework.