GoogleDocs and Collaboration

Here is a picture of a collaborate effort between three teenagers to create a snow army in my backyard. This was taking place as I was inside of the house working on the collaborative SLMC website paper. Collaboration everywhere! Click here for more fun!

I have decided that I absolutely HATE GoogleDocs (GD)! I really love the idea of being able to collaborate online with a group of people to work on a project, but GD is clumsy to use. Personally, I would rather write a document using Microsoft Word and email it back and forth before using GD again. I am wondering if there is a better collaboration format out there for writing documents. I see so many possibilities for a tool such as GD. Too bad it is so clumsy to work with. I read Christopher Case's article entitled GoogelDocs and Spreadsheets: Collaborating in the Classroom or Library. In fact, I read it twice. Once before I started using GD for this week's project and again today because I honestly wanted to be convinced of all he says it is. I am wondering what is wrong with me that I don't like it. Am I missing something? Maybe I am just spoiled by all the things that Microsoft Word has to offer. Of course GD can't copy it because that would be breaking copyright!

I thought working together on one article this way was challenging in many respects. There were times that I wanted to communicate quickly with my fellow collaborator(s), but had to wait for them. I understand this because we all have our own time constraints and schedules. On the flip side, I thought it was interesting that we could write a paper together and share ideas from a distance. Technology is pretty amazing. So here I am in a town south-east of Rochester, collaborating with people in the Buffalo area and coming up with a finished paper. I have never met either of my two group members face to face. Overall, it was a great learning experience.

This all brings to mind a memory that I have from the late 1980's. I had just gotten a job at a bank and was introduced to the fax machine for the first time. I was just amazed that someone could take a document and feed it into this machine at the branch I was working in and a copy of it could come out in an entirely different branch! I thought it was a wonderful invention. I find that memory to be amusing now because of how far technology has come since!

I enjoyed the discussion group this week on how we would use (or wouldn't use) web 2.0 in the school library. I like the idea of online book discussions. My classmates had so many other great ideas on how to use them too. I've been looking at quite a few blogs for school libraries. Some of them are blogs that I read regularly. I love all the ideas I'm getting from them and some day I hope to be involved more directly with a school library blog of my own. I happened to find the library blog for the high school that my son attends. I liked feeling connected with the happenings there.