GAIN 5/4

1.  Strengths and Weaknesses of Google Docs over Word

• Strengths
• Items are saved to the cloud.  This means that the student can be more mobile, not tied down by hardware.  They can save a document at school and open it up in their living room.
• It is very easy to collaborate on a document.  Each person can literally write their own piece of the paper on the same document and the participants do not need to be in the same room.  On top of this there is a useful revision history tab that keeps track of all changes.
• Google Docs is free.
• Cans be utilized on any device, not just Chromebook.
• Functions much like Word, which is a system most will be familiar with.
• Weakness
• The biggest strength of Google Docs is its major weakness.  The fact that documents must be saved to the cloud can be inconvenient and potentially unsafe.  For example, yesterday I had to drive to McDonald's simply to access the Google docs account.  In regards to safety, anything that is saved to the Google Drive can potentially be hacked.  Of course this is a possibility on Word, but there are measures that can be taken to insure that those files are kept safe and these measures cannot be taken by the consumer with Google Docs.

2.  Common Core

There are at least three standards addressed in the Graham book that Google Documents emphasizes.  These standards are...

• Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
• Use technology, including the internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.
• Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames fora a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.  (Graham, 42)

3.  Collaborative Document

There were a couple of takeaways I had from the collaborative effort.  First, it can be difficult to find an internet connection at times, which throws the whole process for a bit of a loop.  This is maybe the biggest flaw with Docs.  Other than that I was very happy with how the collaboration worked.  Our inputs were very responsive and the interface was a lot like Word, which was helpful since that is what I am most familiar with.