The Future of Computing is in the Clouds?

Many futurists including the recent Nielsen Report on the Future of Computing see cloud computing as the next big thing. Even Microsoft is getting into the game. Cloud computing or the use of applications that are online rather than being installed on your computer has many plusses as well as some notable downsides. Enabling users to work on documents independent of the problems of commercial software licensing and and/or having the “right” version is one big plus. Being able to open up your work for others to collaborate on is another.
Zoho and Google Docs are two of the most applicable to education cloud portals where teachers and students alike can gain an entree into the world of cloud computing. Zoho is the most feature laden suite with not only word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools but also mail, chat and documents management amongst other applications. The Google suite also has word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications with the added capability of creating online feedback forms which feed the results directly into the spreadsheet application for analysis. This alone is a handy tool that students and others seeking feedback find very useful.
This workshop will guide you through the setup of both a Google and Zoho Docs accounts and explore ways that you and your students can use the applications contained within each suite. We will look at the similarities between the main components of each and contrast them with more traditional productivity suite software products. We will also look at how the content can be worked on both online and offline as well as shared collaboratively.

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