Monday, January 28, 2008

Project Play Semester 2, Week 2

Week 2 lesson introduces Google Docs. The assisgnment was to added an entry to the "Garden Budget" spreadsheet and/or add a slide to the "Project Play slideshow".
Adding an entry to the Garden Budget speadsheet proves frustrating. I tried twice and gave up because Google Docs was taking so long accessing the database. Finally, I got in this morning and added an entry for "orange sunshine" watermelon seeds.
A few days ago, I added a picture to the slideshow of geese in the backyard at my sister's residence in Cary, N.C.

We are currently using Basecamp on a few projects, so I am somewhat familiar with the collobarative and sharing of files features of Google Docs. I did a cursory check on Google for comments on Basecamp vs Google Docs. One person characterizes Basecamp as a "rudimentary project respoistory" and Google Docs is "much more collaborative and maintains fantastics change history."

I would be interested in seeing other staff projects take advantage of Google Docs many features. Keeping a local backup of important files, rather than relying on an off site server, is still an important considertion.

1 comment:

Stef Morrill said...

I think both Basecamp and Google docs are great, but for different purposes.

If you have a document or spreadsheet that a lot of people are going to change, then Google docs works great. With Basecamp, the Writeboard isn't very robust, and with the "Files" area, you have to upload the changed file rather than changing it in Basecamp.

But when we're trying to manage multiple aspects of a project -- timeline, tasks, files, communications, Basecamp is the tool we use.