This week’s webinar will focus on Webware. What is Webware? Gordon Synder and Mike Qaissaunee, our guest bloggers, write about webware and what they will be going over this Friday for NetWorks free Webinars. For further webinar information, visit matecnetworks.org/growth - webinars.

Have you ever been working collaboratively on a document, either with one other person or multiple people? Have you been frustrated looking through your computer or your email for the most recent version or even an older version that that has something you’ve since deleted? Worse yet, have you ever been looking for that file wondering if the most recent version is on my work computer, my laptop, my home computer, my email or any number of usb drives I have laying around - or even worse yet on someone else’s computer. What about collaboration - sending a file around by email, everyone adds their comments and you have to try to put it all together - what a hassle. And who can stand to read documents with track changes turned on. Well there’s a new class of applications called webware coming to the rescue! Webware are online software applications that try to replicate the richness and responsiveness of traditional desktop applications. Among the factors that have led to the proliferation of webware are: increased adoption of high-speed internet, greater bandwidth, cheap storage and a new dynamic and interactive web architecture enable by a collection of technologies referred to as Web 2.0 and AJAX. Google Docs (formerly Google Docs & Spreadsheets) is an example of webware - an online analogue of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. Everybody’s getting into the act, including big players like Microsoft and Google, and little fish like Zoho and Thinkfree.

Google Docs is a fairly full-featured online word processor, spreadsheet editor and presentation application that enables you, your colleagues and your students to create, store and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It’s this sharing - the collaboration - that’s really exciting! Sharing enables you to decide who can access and edit documents, and even better, all changes are kept in a document revisions history. You can create documents from scratch or upload existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Other than a web browser and a network connection, there’s no software required, and all your documents are stored safely online and accessible from any network-connected computer. Some of the neat features include being able to save documents to Word, spreadsheets to Excel and either (documents or spreadsheets) to HTML or PDF. The Spreadsheets and Presentations even have a panel that allows collaborators to have a live chat regarding the document. A particularly useful feature - AUTOSAVE - means you never have to remember to save your work!

How are people using it? Teachers are publishing announcements about upcoming assignments and monitoring student progress via the revision history. In the revision history, you can see clearly who contributed to what assignment and when; if a student says he or she worked on a given project for five hours, it will be documented (no more “dog ate my homework” excuses). Additionally, faculty are using GD to keep track of grades, attendance, student projects and assignments. Students are using GD to stay organized and work more effectively. Google Docs helps promote group work and editing skills, and encourages multiple revisions and peer editing. Students can go online to collaborate with other students, teachers, parents, relatives and tutors, and enter updates anytime from anywhere. And through their revisions history, kids can check how they’ve revised a document and who has helped. Not to be outdone, Google spreadsheets allows students to track their grades, assignments, semester goals, baseball statistics, car expenses, or anything else that interests them.

Consider the example of a high school English and journalism teacher who uses Google Docs to help facilitate students’ work and has found significant improvement in their writing. Among the reasons she gives, GD:
· facilitates peer editing and revising,
· allows for multiple versions of an assignment,
· allows her to see who students collaborated with and when,
· prevents students from losing documents either by failing to save or having crashed
hard drives, and
· provides 24/7 access to their documents from anywhere in the world

Adds the teacher - “It has changed the way I teach writing… for the better!!”

Here are some interesting uses other people have found for this tool: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour5.html

Imagine the way you could use GD in your work - collaborating with colleagues to develop curriculum, a budget or even complete committee work - the possibilities are endless - take it for a spin.

Gordon Synder and Mike Qaissaunee

Tomorrow’s blog they will look some more into Webware.

If you have any questions, please join us this Friday, Sept 28 at 10am PST, for our WebWare Part 1. This is free and you can register at matecnetworks.org/services - webinar - more - calendar.