Google Docs Wins!

My classmate Linda Phan presents a very good case of Twitter vs. Facebook as favorite social media tools (http://lphan22.blogspot.com/2011/11/twitter-vs-facebook.html).  Although Twitter and Facebook have rated well, Google Docs wins hands-down this term as my favorite social media tool. Google Docs is a document management, editing and storage tool that is full functioned, excellent for collaboration, and free (perfect for the student)!  

Google Docs is an office suite, like Microsoft Office, for creating or importing documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms and drawings.  My first exposure to Google Docs was for the purpose of creating a document from scratch.  Setting up an account was very simple—Google Docs is free of charge, so just requires access to the internet and a Google mail account.   While creating my document, some features of Google Docs seemed limited relative to Microsoft Word such as simple copy and paste features.  However the usefulness of the tool became evident soon enough.  First, Google Docs automatically saved my work after any changes and stored my content on its own online server.  As a result, I could access my Google Docs document on another computer without the need to send my file by email or save it on a USB stick.  After years of having transferred Word and Power Point files via USB sticks, I was delighted!  Google Docs also accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc., so I was also able to go ahead and upload my existing Microsoft Power Point Presentations:

Google Docs preserved my images and fonts flawlessly for presentation despite changes in the computer platform - a big plus. This highlights the beauty of Google Docs browser based universality, by working exactly the same way on both Macs and PC's (unlike standard office suites like Microsoft Office).  

Soon after my first exposure to Google Docs, I had the opportunity to use the tool collaboratively.  A typical group project in the past would have included emailing each person with the document, getting separate feedback, and then manually compiling the feedback to the original document.  With Google Docs, after creating my document I had the choice of visibility (choices below) and accessibility  i.e. choice if others can view only, comment, or edit the document. 

All people allowed to collaborate on the project could do so at the same time, edits were visible to everyone involved, and any compilation could be done in real-time right in Google Docs.  Google Docs also has a “show comments stream” in the right-hand side bar – a handy feature for real-time exchange between collaborators.  Please visit http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html for more Google Docs features. Here is a sample of a document that I wrote visible to the public on the web with a comment added (courtesy of roy4):

For other inspired ideas on how to use Google Docs, please see Jen Merkel’s article at  http://engage365.org/2010/11/17-ways-to-use-google-docs-for-meeting-planning/ or Google’s For Educators Google Docs page at http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html .