Thing 13 - Google Docs, Dropbox and Wikis

Phew! Sorry for the delay in exploring and blogging about Thing 13, but the last couple of weeks have been much busier at work (after our Summer lull) with new and existing student enrolments. After doing some research i have created new Google Docs and Dropbox accounts for myself and looked at the various uses/benefits of Wikis. These 3 things are all basically 'data storage and sharing' devices with various differences. Google Doc's allow the user to create, save, store and share documents while collaborating in realtime with other users. It is a free web based 'office suite' with facilities for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings and forms. Dropbox is a great file storage application which can be easily used and accessed from any of your computers (PC, Laptop, iPad or mobile phone etc), and shared with others. It is similar to Evernote but focuses more on files rather than textual, image and web based content. Wiki's allow multiple people to work on the same document and pool all their knowledge and ideas together to provide one large collaborative source of information. This is usually beneficial as several brains are often better than one, but this can also lead to confusion and inaccuracies.