I really see the value of these online productivity tools. Both Zoho and Google Docs are very easy to use. For me, one of the main advantages is the ability to upload documents that I have already created. I have tons of lessons that I have saved that would be great for interested teachers to have (one teacher that I collaborated with extensively has transferred to another school and this is a great way for her to continue with those lessons that we have already successfully used). I practiced uploading a Word document with an image to both Zoho and Google Docs. The only thing that I needed to do in both was to space between paragraphs. I now have access to these wherever I am and can make these documents public, share them certain people, or link them to my wiki. I am currently creating this in Zoho Writer and will publish it to my blog when I am finished (hopefully).
Of course, the collaborative aspect is huge also. Two years ago, a 6th great teacher and I collaborated on an Ancient Civilizations Diary project. After planning, I created a Word document detailing the project. We successfully implemented the project, but needed to make some changes. It was the end of the year, so we didn't get around to making the changes. The next year rolled around and it was time to the project again. The teacher couldn't find her paper copy. I had to search a little to find it on my computer. I make the changes we discussed then attached it to her in an email. With Zoho or Google Docs, both of us have access to this lesson and we can now share it with the other 6th grade Social Studies teachers. We will be able to weed out those filing cabinets and binders and update our projects easily.
Zoho has a presentation system (Google Docs currently does not). I uploaded 2 PowerPoint presentations to Zoho (most of my presentations are at school so I was limited in choices). The first one was too large (26 slides with lots of images) and the last few slides did not show up. The 2nd one was fine and can be accessed at http://show.zoho.com/public/dragon_lady/CSLA%20Presentation%20Opening%20PPT.ppt2 . Some of the images need to be repositioned and the animated graphics are now stills. Zoho recommends that the upload be read only. When I deselected the read only option, the PowerPoint did not upload as nicely - not everything transferred and words like header, etc. showed up. On the other hand, it is very easy to create a presentation, and while Zoho is more basic than PowerPoint, it would be useful as a collaborative tool for short presentations.
I do plan on using Google calendar this year for my both my library calendar and for the laptop carts that teachers check out.
3 comments:
Good to hear your observations. Have you ever heard promotions for Zoho? We always hear news about Google, but rarely Zoho. Thanks for your observations.
Enjoy.
- JackieS
CSLA 2.0 Team project manager
Way to use the heck out of Google Docs and Zoho. I love them too! Are you going to use Google Calendar by the hours or do you have a way to put "Period 1" etc in there? I would like to use it too. Are you going to create one and give your teachers the password or what?
I am interested in how you are going to configure your calendar as well. Our periods begin and end at such random times....and different days have different schedules. So I don't think going by the hours will work for us. Maybe one of us will figure out how to do a 7 or 8 period calendar and will share!!
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