The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past two years and for good reasons! These powerful applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need of installed desktop applications. Some experts speculate that this emerging trend may mean the death to Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think web-based applications have their place, but not in the office. But no matter which side of the office suite platform you side with, on this both sides seem to agree; web-based apps have their place.
One large benefit to web-based applications it that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easy accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Google Docs and Zoho Writer and to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.
We will be taking a look at Google Docs, the Google online productivity suite.
Activities:
1. Check out the Common Craft video "Google Docs in Plain English" to see why Google Docs make a lot of sense.
2. Go to Google Docs at http://docs.google.com/ and sign in using the Google account you created when you started your blog (if you're already logged in, you can skip to the next step).
3. Once you're in Google Docs, take the "Quick Tour" to find out more. At the end of the tour, click on "Try it out."
4. Create a new document, spreadsheet or presentation. Add some information and save it. Check out the Share option in the top right corner of the page. You can send other people an invitation to view and edit the file you just created.
5. Now look at the Publish option. If you type up a document in Google Docs, you can use the publish option to send it to your Blogger blog.
6. What do you think? Let us know in your blog. Use Google Docs to write the blog post, then use the tools there to post it directly to your blog.
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4 comments:
The link to Google Documents is wrong. It takes you to some screen about claiming your blog. I went to google and did a search for google documents and found it that way.
The link does not take you where it says it does. If you type the address (http://docs.google.com) into the browser address field instead of clicking on the link, it works.
If you want to take the quick tour, you have to click help first.
The Quick Tour is very hidden, I didn't find it till after I finished making my document.
I never did figure out how to publish my document or my blog post. I typed the post directly into my blog and copied the url to make a link (after publishing my document to the web). There has got to be an easier way!
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