An interesting little video about Google Docs.
I’ve been using Google Docs quite a bit lately for my BAWS project, using it as a repository for notes, free writings, and (I had planned) actual drafts of things. On the one hand, I like Google Docs for all the reasons mentioned in this video, especially that I can access my files from wherever. I like that it would probably take an apocalyptic of proportions much more important than any book project for these files to disappear. And, of course, it’s free.
As a teaching tool, Google Docs seems to have huge potential. Not only do you get all of the above reasons, but you also get a system where you can share files with each other, something that would make peer review and collaborative writing pretty easy.
On the other hand, I’m feeling the need to actually go back to the evil MS Word when it comes to actually writing things that might turn into parts of a book manuscript, I guess for two basic reasons. First, I’m already running into some feature problems that (as far as I can tell) Google Docs doesn’t do– footnotes, for example. And second, there is the ever-present and somewhat annoying power of MS Word being the thing that everyone else in the universe uses. Hmmm….
Resist Steve! Avoid the Dark Side. Switch to OO.
:-)
Cheers for OOo. I don’t think I will ever pay for any form of MS-Word again. The school provides one for me on my work computer.
I agree that I wouldn’t be comfortable using Google Docs for a final product, but I’m pretty sure that from now on every panel proposal that I put together and every other collaborative project that I do will take place on Google Docs.
Given the geeky nature of Google, I’m not surprised if they put an equation editor ahead of footnotes. That will keep it from being useful as a tool for publishing humanities scholarship, but we still do a lot of other kinds of writing. I’m eager to try it out on students in basic comp.