I have spent the past few days exploring two popular and free word processing programs: Google Drive, and Open Office. I found both of these programs to be amazing, and can see their potential for classroom use.
I found that Google Drive offers many of the same tools as Microsoft Office, just that it is in the form of a web browser, not a software that you need to purchase. With Google Drive, you can create a variety of items, such as: folders, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and drawings. Google Drive is a very accessible tool, as it can be accessed on any computer with internet. I find the fact that Google Drive can be opened on pretty much any computer with internet, anywhere, very appealing. Google Drive also allows for documents to be shared, for collaboration purposes. You can create folders (perhaps a Class Folder), and where students can share information with you, or with their classmates. Sharing documents, alongside with the revision tool can be particularly useful for teacher and peer editing.
Open Office and Google Drive are very similar, but there are a few obvious differences. Open Office offers you to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, databases, and formulas. I find the graphics and tools options of Open Office more appealing than Google Drive. In the text documents, the tools are very accessible to the user as they are located at the top of the page in the form of icons, rather than in a drop down menus like in Google Drive. I do like the icons and layout of Open Office better that Google Drive, because I find that it is very similar to Microsoft Office, which I have become very accustomed to. Although free, you have to download Open Office rather than opening it in a web browser like Google Drive. This can make create difficulties if you are not on a computer where you can download programs (like public computers). Additionally, since you have to download Open Office, it is very limited to your computer, and not as easy to access from a mobile device. Google Drive on the other hand, is mobile friendly (in a limited fashion).
I like that Open Office and Google Drive both allow for different text templates to be downloaded. Open Office provides various templates that you can download, and Google Drive provides many different Apps that you can add to your Google Drive, one being a Templates App. Templates that you can retrieve are a Resume template, or a Brochure template, or a Calendar template, and many more.
I think that both of these programs are great to use with students as they are free, easily accessible, and easy to navigate and use.
An excellent post and useful. Many experienced educators and leaders could not speak to the difference of these programs. In the end, the benefit of this task must have seemed quite obvious. You can speak clearly about online, free and collaborative tools and have a strong understanding of why/how we need to be exploring these free alternatives rather than focusing on closed and licensed based programs that are often not those that our students are choosing during their "own" time. Thanks for the information...I'm about to twitter it out to the world. Nice stuff.
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