Week 5 – Web Office Tools
Week 5 – Web Office Tools
My response to the MLA Web 2.0 101 Week 5 assignment was first prepared as a GoogleDocs document, then saved to my Blog for further editing.
- I first imported an existing WEBTREAT on end of life care to GoogleDocs and saved it to my Blog. I then made a minor change to the document and saved it to my Blog again. I was pleased to note that GoogleDocs reminded me that I already had saved a document with the same name to my Blog and asked me if I wanted to replace it.
- One problem that I noticed in transferring a Office Open Writer document to Word to GoogleDocs to my Blog was spacing, so I don’t recommend so many generations of programs going into a Blog. However, importing my document into GoogleDocs seemed just fine.
- Pulling up the spreadsheet and making changes was very easy.
- Creating a presentation slide was more challenging on a dial-up connection. I thought I had lost my slides as I kept getting error messages when I tried to save the show, but an earlier version was still there. I was able to edit it and share it with people. Apparently you can not post a slide show to a Blog however. Too bad!
- Comparing GoogleDocs to Zoho, Microsoft, and Webex: I did not get into any of these three products to check them out. Zoho required too much paperwork, Microsoft did not display the required fields, so I could not register, and the Webex website did not work. I like that GoogleDocs did not require any upfront paperwork – just an existing Google account.
- Do I think that GoogleDocs and similar Web-based products are the future of office software? Probably not, or not any time soon. For me, they have great potential. I’m part-time, so it will be nice to be able to work on documents at home and at work in the same format. I can also see great potential for group document development, although my (cheap) husband said that he just sends an e-mail. Assuming that these documents are really secure and safe, I can see keeping some common documents on the Web, so that they can be used at home or at work. For instance, we respond to dozens of incoming e-mail messages every day, many asking for guidelines form our organization or other commons questions. We keep various “cheat sheets” that summarize some answers on our computers at work. My boss also keeps them on a portable hard drive. Keeping them on the web might make more sense – and perhaps we might even want to share some of them as FAQS.
- Obviously one needs to be very careful about what one stores on the Web and how one shares information. I keep adding websites to del.icio.us for my own quick reference, including adding a FacePage and other sites from this course. The FacePage site had more than 600 co-links – all spam! So that was probably not a good idea.
Del.icio.us is delicious!
Del.icio.us is delicious!
I loved Week 4 of the MLA course! Signing up for del.icio.us was very easy (now that I remember to NOT use my work e-mail) and using it was very intuitive. Using del.icio.us really appeals to my inner indexer.
I easily viewed the SJLibraryLearning2 site on digital libraries and could move through the ’saved by’ link to other views with tags and categorizations. I could wander through the pages for hours, if I had the time.
I bookmarked 5 sites in del.icio.us: the MLA course blog, my blog, the ACOG Webtreats, the SOGC sexuality site, and the British family planning site. I was surprised that only one person had bookmarked the MLA site to date, but please that 2 other people (not from ACOG) had bookmarked the ACOG WEBTREATS, and that 13 people had also marked the British family planning site, and 24 had marked the SOGC sexuality site. Oh, then I bookmarked a few more that I bumped into in the SJLibraryLearning2 site. Such fun!
I can see using Del.icio.us for my bookmarks, and I would like to explore some of the other options (CiteULike and Connotea) for managing recommended new articles and reports. I will need to play with them to see if they can replace my manual system that I’m currently using.
I will also recommend either CiteULike or (probably) Connetea to other staff, especially those who are always working with huge bibliographies for their projects!
I have wondered where clouds came from – and now I know. The greatest use of them that I saw recently was in an art exhibit at Touchstone Galleries. Real-time clouds for the two Democratic candidates were flashing on the floor as part of an interesting piece.
