3b Blog – Microsoft Word/Excel vs Google Docs

Week 3

Google Docs is not as robust as Microsoft Office, but Google Docs does offer some advantages in a classroom setting that would make it my choice for a school district.  It is a free application that does not require licensing.  This offers a tremendous savings especially in this day of tight school budgets.  Students can use Google Docs at home on the Internet without having to buy their own version of Office.  With Google Docs, there are no compatibility issues with different versions such as one finds with Office 2003 and Office 2007. 

The real advantage to using Google Docs comes with cloud computing.  The students save their documents on the Internet.  They don’t have to worry about where they saved their documents.  They don’t have to worry about losing their documents if their hard drive crashes.  Their documents will always be available when they login to Google Docs.  Google Docs allows for collaboration.  Students can easily email their documents to others to work on projects together even if they are not in the same room.

It appears that cloud computing is the future of technology.  Collaboration and sharing are key elements of this future.  This can be seen with Google Docs and this week’s readings involving social bookmarking.  No longer are a person’s bookmarks stored on a computer only to be seen and used by that one person.  With social bookmarking, they are on the Web for others to see and use creating a virtual community of individuals with similar interests.