Continuing on with the conversations about the virtues and perils of free web tools from the cloud versus DIY or paid services, of course, there is always Google and their Google Docs tools.

The Google docs model, of course, is the future.  In a very few years, all our software and personal content will no longer reside on our hard drives, but will be stored remotely on the web machine.  They’ll be able to be shared and accessed with ease by any number of users.

Google’s blogging platform, Blogger, is the best known of all the blogging services.  It does offer free blogs for everyone, including educators / learners.  It does have the “Next Blog” link, which does cause some concern for educators, but that can be quickly removed with a simple insert of 3 short lines of html code.  Believe me, I know next to nothing about coding, but have managed to master this exercise.

However, the real gem for educators is the ever-popular Google Docs.  These on-line tools feature word processors, spreadsheets, presentation tools, forms (surveys, data, etc) and Google Pages (simply editable web pages). Frankly, I am beginning to think that – given Google’s relatively stable status – this is a suite that we need to start exploring and exploiting for learning.

In fact, some teachers already are well on the way.  Google has released their new Google Docs for Educators page, where they share some of the best ideas on how Google Docs can be used to support collaboration and sharing for learning. Some of these ideas rock, especially how some have used the tools to develop and manage student projects!

Can they fly in your class?

Technorati tags: technology, education, whipple, learning

Photo Credit: Google Docs Paper Airplane, uploaded to Flickr on April 1, 2008 by colin_n, Creative Commons Licensed