Google Docs - Getting the Job Done

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My name is Ron Hall.
I live at the Funny Farm.

Did a presentation/demonstration yesterday at a local university - Gonzaga Law School. Was for their newly formed Environmental Law Clinic. I met the guy who runs it earlier this year - I was impressed by him and what he was doing, he was taken by what I was doing with Google Earth. We also both love to play golf.

Point of the demonstration was to show his students - law students that work on real cases - the possibilities of what can be done in the field of environmental law with something like Google Earth. I have been back to school a number of times over the course of my career, but during the last stint, an interdisciplinary masters degree in computer science and urban planning, I was blown away by how engaged the students are in bring technology to bear in their education. Yesterday was no different. Everybody had a laptop going in front of them. Only difference was mine was hooked to the projector.

What was interesting for me was that they knew about Google Earth, but not all it's capabilities - they had not even scratched the surface. The same was true about Google Docs. I mentioned this to them because their work requires a collaborative effort, and Google Docs (along with a few other Google tools) facilitates this.

Google Docs (see tabs/buttons upper left of Gmail screen) allows you to do everything you do with Microsoft word processing applications - documents, spreadsheets, presentations - only on line. You can also set up these files so that you can collaborate on them with others. You can work from existing templates (there are tons - create things like forms). Upload your existing files - most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc., are accepted. You can get access from any computer that has an inernet connection (I have even used my Iphone). You can even preserve them as web pages.

I use customizied versions that interface with Google Earth and Google Checkout to help run and maintain various pieces of interactive web content that I have.

Tip - many Google offerings interface with each other or other web applications you use. Example - at one point during the Google Earth demo I had created a sample piece of content - I right clicked on the content in the panel, showed them the option for "email" that appeared, had a student type in his address on my laptop (remember I am still working on my keyboarding) and I sent. Got a "Cool!" comment when he sat down at his machine again. Wish it was that easy to impress my 1 year old daughter.

Time to go.

Make it a good day.