Realia

Archive for September, 2011

For Thing 13, the assignment is to explore Google Docs, Dropbox, and wikis. I am a big fan of Google Docs. I have used it in a number of collaborative situations, including committee work for the state library association and sharing ideas with the instructors with whom I co-teach a cataloging class. I also have to say that I really love using Google Docs forms – it makes it easy to set up a web-based form and then the results can be shared as a spreadsheet with others.

Compared to Google Docs, I have not been using Dropbox for very long, but so far, I have found it very useful as well. It is nice to have it installed on my home computer, so that when I save Word files to the Dropbox folder at home, they are synced to the online Dropbox folder and I can access them from anywhere. I know there are some security issues involved with Dropbox, so I wouldn’t use it for any highly sensitive information, but for things that I’m not too worried about, I have really found it very useful.

Of all of the tools for Thing 13, wikis are probably the ones that I use the least. It’s not because I don’t see their value, but I think that I’ve just never found the right group of people who all agree that using a wiki is a good thing. I think it takes a certain amount of commitment to really get wiki usage off the ground. I am toying with the idea of using wikis for group projects in the grad school class I am teaching next spring, though, so we’ll see how that goes.