I created this document using Google docs. After reading the first two articles, I could see immediate potentional for this.
Last week, I tried to open a Word document that I had created at work and emailed to myself to work on at home. I discovered what I always seem to forget since the computers were upgraded at work: Word 2007 documents can't be opened by Word 2000 documents unless saved in a special way. I thought that I could create documents in Google docs and then be able to open them or edit them from work and at home. The problem is that the district blocks Google docs.
I like the fact that it is set up much like Word. The symbols look familiar, making it easy for any user of Word to quickly adapt.
If they unblock this, I can see many possibilities.
I also explored Zoho. I couldn't figure out what information it wanted from my Google account, so I just reregistered. One thing that I thought would be very useful is the planner. I have multiple meetings, activities and reports. This is an excellent way for me to keep track of what needs to be done. My only concern is that the school district may have blocked this also. I like the note-taking feature. Sometimes administrators come through and see the schedule empty & wonder what I was doing. This would be a great place for me to be noting that "I cataloged 27 books" or "counted the 2734 books in the RIF order to make sure that they were all there," or "benchmark testing."
I'm not sure that I'm entirely ready for complete computing in the cloud, but have been doing some for years. It seems that my email account at work is limited in the amount that I'm allowed to store. Yahoo doesn't limit the email amount (or if they do, I've never reached that limit.) So, whenever I have an email that I may want to reference in the future, I forward it to my Yahoo account. The only drawback so far is that the district also blocks Yahoo mail. This means that I must look up the item at home and forward it back to my school account if I want to access it at work.
I'm not comfortable storing my photos only on the web. I like the security of having them burned on CD. My banking is still done on paper. A friend of mine says that paper checks will be obsolete in three years, and everyone will do electronic transfers. I hope not. I get paper statements from my credit cards also, though they have repeatedly encouraged me to switch to electronic statements. My insurance company is also encouraging me to switch to web-only statements. The utility companies could save a bundle if they had a way to issue bills electronically.
I know that the day is coming when I will be forced to switch over. My mother is executer for my great-aunt's estate. The company that is handling the accounts for the underage recipients informed her that they would be charging $25 per month per account unless she went paperless. Making the switch was a major ordeal for her. It took repeated phone calls and attempts for her to set up the accounts electronically.
I read about Dropbox and Evernoteand both of these sound like things that I would like to explore further.
The fouth article pretty well summarized some of my misgivings. I do see possibilities for libraries and librarians using the cloud.
I would like to post my signup schedule using something like Googledocs so that all teachers could see which periods are open and sign up themselves. I need to experiment though to ensure that they can't delete someone else's sign up.
I can also create pages of notes to share with my ELA teachers. Each grade level is assigned a novel to read each six weeks.
This would be a great place for us to share notes and add links to go with those novels. Now, we are doing it by email and everyone is creating their own notes using links and other information. We could all edit a master document via Googledocs, and all of us could have access to it at any time.
Our library catalog (Destiny) and Accelerated Reader Program are already in the cloud. The data is stored "out there" somewhere. I love being able to access from home. This allows me to do many of my reports from home.
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