Thing 18: Online Productivity Tools

Wow! After a looooong vacation from the 23 Things, I'm ready to get back to it and finish things up.

I like using Google docs because it's accessible from any computer and it's free. People working on a group project can have access to the docs they need without emailing them back and forth to each other--wish I'd known about this for those group projects in grad school! It doesn't have quite the functionality of Microsoft Word, but who really uses all the tools Word offers on a regular basis?

There's also OpenOffice.org, which for the most part, is almost exactly like Office, except you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it. It's great for those people who are on the wrong side of the digital divide and may not have access to Office. I tried out the Word equivalent and liked it very much. It had all the functions that *I* use in Word, plus you can choose which format you want to save in. It's compatible with all the versions of Word. I admit, I'm not a spreadsheet expert, so I didn't really check out that part of it. At least not yet.

When a tool is online, it makes it much more accessible to everyone and "collaboration friendly," for sure.

Thing #17: Rollyo

Way cool! This is one I'd NEVER played with at all, and now I wonder why it's not more "out there." Or is it just that I'm that out of it? I love this tool, especially being able to search any site with the Rollyo roll bar. That way I can always search from the same place and not have to look for each individual web sites search window. Plus, being able to add sites to a search roll on the fly is just awesome.

Rollyo allows educators to create kid-friendly search rolls or subject specific search rolls for their students to use. It's also fun to make subject specific search rolls for your fellow educators. I made one that includes some blogs that do reviews of children's and YA literature: http://rollyo.com/infogoddess2b/childrenya_lit/.