Google Docs on Campus

The assignment asks us to make a prediction about the usefulness and acceptance rate of online document sharing tools like Google Docs on college campuses. However, I really don't need to predict anything. I began using Google docs in my very first graduate school course in the fall of 2007 and have used it on most of my collaborative projects since then (which in library school amounts to a lot of projects--we love teamwork!). Professors and classmates are open to and encourage the use of these tools.

I have yet to share a document with a professor of a face-to-face class as I did this week for SCILS598, though. So far, they do still seem to prefer attachments or printed assignments. Still, I think we're moving toward this. In the case of printed assignments, I think we are all becoming more conscious of the amount of paper we use so some people are bound to start looking for alternatives. Google Docs has the advantage over an attachment because there are no concerns about software compatibility, items getting lost in inboxes or accidentally deleted, or any of the other myriad problems that arise with attachments.

Thing 18: What's up, Docs?

I've already used Google Docs quite a bit (and I heart it), so I figured for this exercise I'd try something new by composing this blog entry in Google Docs then publishing it to Blogger. I'll open it up and edit after it's published to let y'all know how it went.

ETA: Well, there was a lot of white space between the title and the body of the post and I can't quite figure out why. That's easy enough to fix, though, and publishing from Google Docs was a cinch. I liked how it even published the name of my document as the title of this post.