Office 2.0

Web-based is the key to it all! Google Docs was the quickest and easiest of all of the lessons so far. Maybe it just felt that way because bandwidth didn't seem to be an issue. The "any where, any computer" concept I am already in love with, in addition to the sharing. I've been working on a revised school library site visit form in Word so I uploaded it to Google Docs. At first, the formatting was an issue, the logo was unclear, and it produced three pages where I only had two in Word. The Help was easy to navigate, I changed the margins, deleted and re-inserted the logo off the SDSL webpage, deleted the line, and was back in business. Not much of a hassle, but it would have been easier if I had created the document in Docs. Next, I tried a PageMaker document. It first had to be changed to a pdf and when uploaded the font changed. (I have lots of documents in Pagemaker because I used it to create the school newspaper and yearbook at TTS.) The Google Groups caught my eye and I checked out the link to the National Writing Project. They have an interesting writing project in progress for high school students using Google Docs. The South Dakota connection is the Dakota Writing Project at USD. The subgroup Rural Sites Network has some interesting info. As always, I click on one thing and discover a ton more. Office 2.0 would save money and server space for schools and libraries. No more "I forgot to put my file on my memory stick" or "I forgot to e-mail my file to myself" as excuses for uncompleted homework. "I lost my disk or CD" has been long outdated. But there will still be "The internet was down!" I also tried out 30boxes because it was a clever name. The integration of Flickr, etc. is cool, but yet another account to create, another login, and another password...