Clouds by Florin Mogos http://www.flickr.com/photos/florin_mogos/2523984446/
Playing around in Google Docs has left me with a number of questions. The value is obvious (no more flash drives, better collaboration, etc.), but I am a sole practitioner, the only librarian in a K12 school, serving a population that has not yet really attuned itself to the idea of collaboration as we view it today. Indeed, in an educational environment in which “follow the child” is the mantra and students work at an individual pace, often at individualized tasks, it can be hard to design tasks requiring the open sharing that Google Docs provides. Still…there are ideas to be milked here.
For librarians “Birthday Book” lists and lists of possible additions are “bread and butter” items. Having access to them from any computer is definitely a plus; even more of a plus (provided the budget can stand it) is the kind of access provided through a smart-phone. Now that I’ve moved that information into my personal cloud, I find myself wanting that capability. The transition from Excel to Google docs for these items was relatively easy… both the format and the formulas I use are quite simple.
I am trying to collaborate with a friend in the production of a Summer reading list. I think we could both benefit from one another’s knowledge, but I am unsure how well the needs of our respective schools synchronize. In this process I have had some frustration with formatting issues as well as with downloading pictures (until I realized that they were in “bitmap” format and needed to be converted into jpeg). What I don’t know about graphics could fill a well and slows me down needlessly. Regarding formatting, it occurs to me that the best way might be to create a pretty final draft in Google then download it and manipulate the visual parts of the format in Microsoft Word.
Where I can see these applications being of great use is in a committee environment. We will soon be facing re-accreditation, which involves the creation of an extremely complex document. The more eyes that see it the better! …not to mention the need for knowledgeable contributors. Recently our technology committee met to create a rank-ordered wish list for the school’s future; a collaborative spreadsheet could have helped in this case too.
The (relative) lack of choice available in the whistles and bangs department could actually be an asset to my students. Fewer choices would probably result in higher productivity when creating a document or a Power Point presentation. I can also see that saving to Google docs might be easier than navigating through the various drives used in our school-wide LAN. Most students end up trying to save things on the desktop where they easily get lost or deleted by someone else who is using the computer. A Google docs account, however, involves having an email account. Our K-5 students don’t have that opportunity at school, which limits the usefulness of these tools for my classrooms unless someone can suggest a workaround.
One abiding question I have regarding these applications is: when is their use more appropriate than that of a wiki? Both can be engineered to produce information which has been collaborated on by multiple users. Perhaps one use for collecting a growing body of changing information and the other for collaboratively building a final document based on that information is the way to look at it.
