Google Docs is a web-based application designed to provide typical Office Automation capabilities. This includes Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Presentation capabilities. Google Docs allows users to create, share, and edit documents, including Forms that can allow for data entry. With Google Docs, you can create new documents from scratch or you can work from a template.
Google Docs includes a MS Word compatible Word Processor that allows you to create original documents, as well as upload and convert text documents to and from OpenOffice, RTF, HTML, text (.txt), Open Document Text (.odt), and other formats. The software provides general formatting tools including bold printing, various font types and sizes, underlining, and other general editing features including spell checking. Documents can be shared, viewed, as well as edited by others, in collaboration. Documents can also be downloaded as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip file(s). These files can also be emailed out as attachments.
Spreadsheets can be imported and converted to and from .xls, Comma Separated Values (.csv), .txt, and Open Document Spreadsheet (.ods) formats. Data can also be saved in both a .pdf and HTML format. There are formatting capabilities that allow you to enhance the presentation of your data, and formula editing tools that allow you to create sophisticated spreadsheets. The collaboration features allow you to chat in real time with others, while working on your spreadsheet. Spreadsheets can also be embedded into Blogs, Wiki’s, and websites. (docs.google.com)
In the Education environment, Google Docs is bundled with Google Apps for Education. Google Apps for Educaiton is free for educational institutions, and comes with a host of applications. My school adopted it in 2008 to support email. We were looking to provide students with school branded email accounts, and Google Apps for Education started us out with 500 free accounts. Our Domain and website are hosted by another provider.
We are in the early stages of reviewing Google Docs, as a possible addition to our standard application suite, which includes Microsoft Office 2003, Windows XP, and now Windows 7. Google Docs will allow us to create and share web-based documents, presentations and spreadsheets that we will be able to edit and update simultaneously, rather than emailing files and having to deal with the confusion of multiple versions of files. This has become a serious problem, as we have not yet made the investment into a School Information System that would allow us to track Student Information, better than the manual methods we have created to date.
In the fall of 2009, I had to share a spreadsheet, with another staff person, as I created user accounts for students, as they were registered for our dual enrollment courses. The method we created was to maintain one spreadsheet that we would send back and forth to each other, using and adding information, as needed. This process worked, but was quite cumbersome, and prone to errors. Google Docs has the potential to allow us to share one document that could be hosted on-line. As with our current method, we could use and update information, as needed.
Google is well known for providing a generally safe and secure technology environment. For email, I am sure generally speaking, this is fine. I do have a concern however, with the possibility of placing confidential student, faculty and staff data in the “Google Cloud” environment. I am also not sure if this will be legally possible for us to do this. I am therefore taking a more cautions approach to implementing Google Docs as an Office Automation tools for our staff.
In closing, I do think Google docs could work out great as a tool for student classroom usage, where highly confidential data is typically not found. It may be that Google Docs as a tool for school staff usage could be implemented with strong warnings, and directives prohibiting certain types of data such as transcripts, social security information, and other types of confidential data from being used.
