Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Singledocumindedness

I’m teaching at an early college high school on the Utah Valley University campus. In my preparations, I have found Docs & Spreadsheets an essential tool, making my job a lot easier. The starting point for the suite is called the Docs Home that makes it easy to keep all the documents organized for my three classes. Docs & Spreadsheets is an online office productivity suite that includes:

A) Docs. An online word processing software app
B) Spreadsheets. An online spreadsheet app.
C) Presentations. A PowerPoint-like presentations app.

Advantages of Docs & Spreadsheets

For starters, I have access to my documents online anytime I need them from any computer. In fact, multiple users also have access to the same documents simultaneously, making sharing and collaboration a snap. There are other advantages:

1) Never misplace a document: Google’s sophisticated search tools to find any document on any topic in your personal Docs library quickly, no matter how many documents or folders you have generated

2) Singledocumindedness for sharing, collaboration and version control: Singledocumindedness means that you don’t need to keep multiple versions of any document ever again -- not for yourself and not for your collaborators. A single copy will do because changes are cataloged and maintained within a single master document in your Docs Home. Google Docs will allow you to revert back to any at any point during the creation process at any time.

Singledocumindedness beats the alternative, multidocumindedness; saving multiple copies of the same document in multiple folders, on multiple drives.

3) Multi-folder support: Stop making a zillion new folders! Don’t save copies of the same document in multiple folders or on multiple drives. Instead, any number of folder names can be attached to a file as a label so the document will appear, like magic, in any folder you assign.

4) Platform independence: Docs & Spreadsheets do not care if you’re an Apple OSX user, a Linux user, a Windows XP user, or a Windows Vista user. All it needs is a web browser like Internet Explorer, FireFox, or Safari on any platform and it’s all good.

Regardless of platform, multiple users can edit the same document alongside a Windows Vista user in real time without a problem.

Is there any downside to Google Docs & Spreadsheets?

Yes. If you must be online to use Docs & Spreadsheets. If you need to work offline, you'll need to export your document from the Docs Home to your hard drive into a file format your desktop software will understand.