Thing 11 - Google

Karen, my Metronet intern, told me last week about a Google feature that could prove to be very useful to our students. It's Google Documents, and it allows anybody to create a document and work on it from any computer, home or school. It can also be used for collaborative purposes. But it's the accessibility aspect that intrigues me. That's because every day, nearly every hour, students come to the library needing to print papers but can't, because they can't access them. Sometimes it's because they've emailed the paper to a hotmail or yahoo account, and sometimes it's because they've used an old computer at home that has old programs that can't be read here by our computers. And oftentimes it's because they've stored it to a floppy disc, and we don't have computers that have disc drives. So this aspect of Google is yet one more valuable tool for our students. Thank you, Karen!