Week 8: Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools
Per this week's discovery exercises, I signed up for a free account with Zoho Writer. This is a nice Web 2.0 application that enables online document creation in a fairly simple and straightforward manner. The editing tools are well placed, clear, and reasonably intuitive. I was easily able to upload my brief ZohoWriter.doc to my blog, using Zoho Writer's export tool to post to a blog. (See below.) In exploring the rest of the Zoho site, several other applications seemed particularly relevant to teachers and librarians. These include the spread sheet (such as for categorizing books), the notetaking application, and the templates. Overall, the hallmark of this site really does seem to be relative clarity and ease of use. I also accessed my Raven About Web 2.0 curriculum and my blog from a borrowed computer in another state since I am traveling this week. This, too, was a positive experience and drives home the point about the purpose of Web 2.0 apps.
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I have to admit that I haven't done much with ZOHO.... mostly because I use so many other google aps that I am using googledocs which is very similar. I know that there are some things that are more robust in ZOHO but I have been able to do everything I need to do on google so far. However, whatever service you use, the ability to share and edit as well as access your docs no matter what computer you are on is becoming more critical for our students. I know that for some of ours, they work on PC at home, use a mac at school and have to print from their parent's or a friend computer. These hosting services allow them to avoid the cross platform, docx and other problems that entails.
ReplyDeleteI have been intrigued with ZOHO and/or G.h.ost which I think do a lot of the same things. The idea of working in a cloud is provided by sites like ZOHO and mentioned in the Raven Team comment, this is of great importance to our students. Our tech guy is not interested in letting them use thumbdrives due to the potential virus infiltration. This type of site would be effective in countering that problem.
ReplyDeletePersonally I create documents on my desk computer that I would like to use on my smartboard. Yes, I have a folder on the network that I could access, but what if I want to use something in an out of the building training . . .??? Having a place to store docs would be really slick.
My understanding is that Mac is going with this concept with
ReplyDeletetheir Mobile Me mail, etc. You can have a photo gallery uploaded to the cloud and download from anywhere. How cool is that?!