I recently wrote about 5 ways to guard against losing your work. Well, it turns out that March 31st is World Backup Day! Who knew?

According to a survey, a fifth of Americans never do a backup. Boy, they must have a lot of faith.

I don't usually take much notice of these sorts of surveys, but I think there are points here that would make a good starting point for a discussion with your class.

I was told:

To conduct the NationalToday.com World Backup Day Survey, the researchers at National Today asked 1,000 Americans about how they take care of their precious electronics.

 *** NATIONALTODAY.COM WORLD BACKUP DAY SURVEY ***

(survey of 1,000 Americans, conducted on March 12, 2017)

>> OVER HALF OF AMERICANS BACK UP THEIR DEVICES LESS THAN ONCE A MONTH

53% of Americans back up their devices once a month or less. 12% report backing up their device once every 6 months, while half as many back up their devices once a year. Amazingly, only 1 in 10 Americans say they back up a device every day.

>> YET, LOSING DATA IS A HUGE FEAR FOR 15% OF AMERICANS

15 in 100 Americans say losing their data is one of their biggest fears—4% even say they’d rather lose their credit card. And their fears are justified, with 16% of Americans reporting they’ve lost data from not backing up their devices.

>> FOR 7 IN 10 AMERICANS, DEVICES ARE AN EXTENSION OF THEMSELVES

The majority of Americans use their devices to store fond memories. 67% say they’d be most upset to lose pictures of family and friends if their data were compromised. Only 3% of respondents would be most upset by the loss of their selfies—proving Americans love their friends more than themselves.

>> RANKING OF THE DATA AMERICANS ARE MOST AFRAID TO LOSE

#1: Pictures of family and friends (67%)

#2: Passwords (9%)

#3: Music (7%)

#4: Text message history (5%)

#5: Videos (4%)

I think those stats are quite interesting. For instance, losing pics of family and friends would be pretty awful, but losing passwords could lead to loss of money or even having your identity stolen.

So you might wish to discuss these issues with your class. Also, do you think the results might be different if your pupils undertook the same survey? Do they backup their work (at home)? Do their parents? What about other teachers?

You could even work this up into a project, because it could entail:

• A survey
• Data processing using a database or a spreadsheet
• Publicity campaign
• Development of an app to remind people to back up their work
• Development of a program module that pops up to remind people to back up their work, or does so automatically
• Discussion of whether the preceding suggestion is a good one: I always worry that if I accidentally delete a great chunk, the autosave function might save that version! So what failsafes would need to be built in?
• E-safety issues