Thing 9: Document Sharing in the Cloud

Last year i gave a presentation about social media and its tools. one of them was teaching my audience the useful tools of google.doc. they enjoyed it.

answering the questions for thing 9:

i feel using google Doc is very usefull when working on a research by a group. as its mentioned one dosnt need to deal with attachments or big files that can not be sent fast.

so far no major drawbacks.

i have used google when was explaining it with almost 39 students who could access the material we wanted to work on. and people liked it.

Sharing documents and working on them collaboratively is a growing trend. There are several services that allow you to create or upload documents for sharing with others.

• Google Docs http://docs.google.com/
• Microsoft Office Live Workspace http://workspace.officelive.com/
• SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/
• Zoho http://www.zoho.com/

Google Docs is a free web-based application suite that includes a word processor, a spreadsheet creator and a presentation designer. Google Docs allows users to create new or upload existing documents, save them to a centrally located Google server and share them with friends, family coworkers or publish them to the Internet. There are many features that separate Google docs from traditional word processing applications, the most significant one may be its inherent collaborative characteristics. Any Google document can be shared, opened and edited by multiple users at the same time and a history of every change to that document is automatically recorded and archived in case users need to revert to a previous format. Google documents may be saved and exported in the following formats; OpenDocument Text (.odt), Rich Text Format (.rtf), and Portable Document Format (.pdf).
More Information About Google Docs:

• Google documents are not saved on a locally operated computer, they are saved on a remote server (commonly referred to as "The Cloud," a growing trend of using web applications that may impact how we use software in the future).
• Google allows users to upload previously created word documents to Google Docs; however, the file size must not exceed 500k.
• Instead of emailing back and forth multiple versions of the same document, invite co-workers to edit one online document.
• Google offers another downloadable product called "Google Gears" which allows its users to view and edit previously created documents offline, without an Internet connection. Once users are able to connect to the Internet, all changes made offline are automatically synced with the documents in Google Docs.

Learn More About It:

• From the Horizon Report, 2009: One Year or Less (Cloud Computing)
• 7 Things You Should Know About Cloud Computing (Educause)
• Read Getting to Know Google Docs: Google Docs Basics
• Getting Started Guide (Google Docs)
• Getting Started Guide (Google Spreadsheets)
• Getting Started Guide (Google Presentations)
• Watch the Common Craft video: Cloud Computing in Plain English
• Watch the Common Craft video: Google Docs in Plain English

assignment:

• How might you use Google Docs as an alternative to the standard document creation tools in Microsoft Office?

actually i have used this feature and was very helpful with a group of people (learning resources specialists in Oman) instead of us having separate documents we could send information at the same time and make changes to same document. howeve i used to upload documents and than share which i cant manage to do now.

• What drawbacks did you notice in Google Docs, if any?

i feel the only drawback will be if this document go to unauthorized people . they can ruwin and mess with the document. also this will need a considerable amount of collaboration and dividing work among a group who is working with shared document so changes hapens only after all agreed.

• Describe your experience of collaborating on a single document with multiple users.

with the steps provided i ddnt find any problem. easy steps to follwo.