This guest post on Free Technology for Teachers brings up an important issue that many seem to oversee: what do you do if the free online service you’ve been using starts charging or stops completely and you have no way of importing your data? And even if they do offer a way to download and save your stuff, of course you’ll still have to start looking for a new service, and chances are the new one will not have the exact same functionalities.

One option is to do everything yourself: get your own domain name (a less than $10 per year investment), get a hosting account (anywhere from free to paying an arm and a leg; realistically between $40-$120 per year), install the software of your choice (lots of free options) and you’re all set. With a little help from your friends, this should be easier than it sounds, but I realise most teachers will still shy away from it for technical reasons.

Besides hosting my own stuff, I also rely on paid and free services and I’d like to think that I choose them wisely: for example, I believe Google is here to stay and they offer services that I wouldn’t be able to create myself.

But read the post and share what you think – where (and how) do you keep your teaching stuff online?