Week 8: Thing 18

Okay, so once again this program wants me to sprawl onto a new website with new links, new passwords, and new usernames. That's just silly. Even if this other software is better, I'm going to stick with Google Docs simply to simplify my life. I first encountered G-Docs when my high school class reunion was being planned a few weeks ago. I was sent the link and then was able to update my information on the spreadsheet that was being used to track attendance. It was a really brilliant idea and use of technology.

This seems like it could eliminate the need for students to have "my documents" folders that have been problematic to access from home. Now there is also no excuse for students who don't have Microsoft Office at home either. Goodbye Works! As far as Open Office, I've tried it and it is okay, but my family reported some compatibility issues and still switched to Word in the end.
With Google Docs, now students can write papers, homework or anything else online directly, save it from home, the library, or school and access it anywhere in the world. They can even share documents with me. However, this gets tricky because it makes it that much easier for them to share it with one another. This means that they could easily type a paper and then share it with someone or work collaboratively when they are supposed to be doing independent work. Not that they can't do that through other technology or simply handing a piece of paper to someone, but this cuts out the middle man. In the end, a brilliant tool for collaborative work, a scary one when you're asking students to do individual work.
One nice feature that this site has is spell check - google sites (for designing wikis and websites) doesn't currently have a spellcheck which is very frustrating. Firefox and Chrome have built in spell checkers, so that's okay, but if you're using IE (i.e. at school) then there is no spell check which can be problematic.
Overall, one of the more helpful tools we've encountered, and it has a lot of potential in the future.