I am taking the plunge and attempting to publish this entry to my blog from Zoho Writer. Wish me luck! I thought I would try some of the tools within the tool and see how they work. Brave of me. If you have read my blog, you know I have Campbell's Russian Dwarf hamsters. We had a litter on February 14th Miss Lucy gave us ... seven dwarves. I'm using the Insert/Modify Image tool to show you a pig pile of tiny bodies.
Okay - enough playing. One of the things that immediately struck me when looking at and reading about Zoho Writer was the ability to edit from anywhere. We have four librarians in our district and we are responsible for maintaining a Program Profile that must be updated yearly. We all work very well together so we share the editing. Just last month we had a flurry of e-mails and attachments back and forth to make the necessary changes. I only have two schools where I can open a Word attachment so had to wait to make comments until I was in the "right" place. Zoho Writer eliminates that barrier as well as allows editing to the original document while tracking changes. As you can imagine, the first thing I did in Zoho Writer was to share the discovery with my colleagues.
We will also be working on a five-year plan as well as a comprehensive curriculum. One of the biggest downsides to working on those projects (besides lack of time) was who would get "stuck" typing it up and distributing it to her colleagues. This might help get us motivated because we can share the load. We've also just completed revisions to our selection policy. With a district in financial crisis, we can save paper by sharing the document with the superintendent and school committee and invite comments via Zoho Writer. This is certainly something to think about to streamline our administrative responsibilities. And - thinking entirely selfishly at this point - administrators may see the librarians as successful users of technology and include our libraries in the next technology bond. (I wish)
On the education side of things, the fact that Zoho Writer so closely resembles Word, will make it easy for students to "hit the ground running." You know those group projects that parents absolutely hate? Zoho Writer allows each member of the group to access the document as needed, enter his/her information, edit when needed, etc. Will this necessarily improve the quality of the output? Maybe not. But teachers will be able to see who has been doing the work via the tracking changes. And - (dream on) if a student is on vacation ... they need not miss out on working with the group. You can all stop laughing now. Let's put it this way - a student who is home recovering or able to handle limited days in school, can still be part of the group. (Much more likely I'm sure.)
I haven't found the tool to be "perfect." I'm still getting that "thunk" in my stomach when I try pressing a button to see what happens. Though the "thunk" would not be as desperate were I mucking around in a play document instead of what I hope to be my blog I still can't figure out how to use a template and I nearly lost my mind over switching to "page view" and figuring out how to get back to my happy editing page - but time and practice will certainly turn me into a successful user. No doubt the students will become successful a lot faster than me.
p.s. When the document posted to my blog, the picture was initially in place, but when I edited for a typo, it did not come back. I added it through Blogger. None of my smiley faces came over either. Interesting.
5 comments:
I also wrote my blog in Zoho writer and wondered how the emoticons would upload - they didn't. In place of the emoticon with the tongue sticking out, it just says "tongue out". I haven't quite figured out what I should have done. I'm glad you were successful.
I'm really sold on Zoho Writer too. Our school will be preparing for another NEASC visit in a few years and this program would be perfect for collaboration among the various committee members. I mentioned Zoho to my daughter who is a pharmaceutical writer and she was very enthusiastic about the collaborative features, but pointed out that there could be security issues with sharing of sensitive medical information.
Oh - my emoticons were equally non-existent! And hornetlady - your daughter makes a good point. As various contributors must be invited to read and/or write to a document, perhaps the more sensitive areas would be restricted to only those who have "clearance." I don't mean to sound like the FBI, but it's a thought.
I think I should try Zoho Writer, though I've never heard of it before.I've been experimenting with web-based technologies for about several months now. What I found really useful was this project tool - Wrike. It's a great way t get students to work together on a group project. The tool is designed for business needs, but we perfectly use it for education.
You write about so many potential uses for Zoho. Zoho has been my favorite so far in the 2.0 world. I immediately thought of that student group project where everyone is writing part and then we have to figure out how to get it all together. This is one that I'm sure I will use. After reading your blog, I will think more about also using Zoho professionally. Thanks for the ideas.
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