Online word processing is a tool that I believe will soon be the dominant factor in the word processing market. With the emergence of programs such as Google Docs there have been several competitors and even the well-know Microsoft Word is starting to follow suit and offer the popular collaborative function and saving documents to the cloud.
I have used online word processing for several different reasons. At school I have implemented it in some of my classes and experienced great success. Students have worked collaboratively on documents and I felt it has created a true "collaborative" experience. It seems like there is more engagement and participation from all group members. It has also allowed greater access to the documents. A problem that I have had in the past with access is that our school computers have Microsoft Word 2007 as the primary word processor. Not all students have access to Word and on top of that, documents saved on the school server are only available on school computers. This limits access in a world that is becoming more and more about unlimited access. The combination of these factors has led me to encourage students to use online word processing and next year I plan on making it mandatory on some assignments.
The downside of these programs is that I still do not think they are as user friendly or have the same capabilities of Microsoft Word. I have stated the same thing about online presentation programs compared to Power Point. While they have come a long way many of the graphics functions in Word are not yet present in the online programs. For basic word processing and formatting the online programs are more than adequate but still need to catch up with other features. I predict that within a couple of years more and more of those functions will be included in online word processors, which will help them catch up to Word.
I agree with your assessment of online word processors. It does become a matter of what you're willing to give up for the convenience of working online, though you can work around some of the issues by creating locally and posting to the online office suite.
ReplyDeleteI think most of us that are intermediate/advanced users of productivity apps know about and agree that the feature set of online apps is about 1/3 - 1/2 way there. That said, I don't think that students just beginning to learn how to use them need the functionality of power users. It seems that most of us agree about the positive and useful aspects of using online apps but the problem is getting committees, IT's, teachers and staff on board. I think students won't really care one way or another. Another way to look at using online apps is to use them for basic content and if advanced functions are required, they can download and import. (Spreadsheet functions and formulas might be a little different because not all export/import s play nice with each other.)
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