Word vs. Google Docs

Post date: Nov 4, 2011 7:47:39 AM

I was recently asked what's the benefit of using Google Docs over a program like Microsoft Word? This is a great question and the answer is each one of these tools does a great job at what they were designed to do.

Word was originally designed for print and publishing. Through the course of many upgrades and product revisions it has evolved into a much more dynamic and complex program. It can do a ton of stuff including making address labels, web pages, tables, charts, document comments and revision histories and the list goes on. All of these are neat features but Word may not be the best at them. It is certainly not the best web page authoring program but it's not designed for that. Another important item to consider with Word, is that it costs us about $60 per machine that we install it on. This amount adds up and upgrades cost us additional amounts as well. If you cant open or edit (.docx) files you know what I am talking about. Lastly, every new version of Word released requires more computing power, hard-drive space and RAM.

Microsoft has a fairly new cloud computing platform called Office 365, it allows for a Word Doc to be moved to the cloud and offers some similar features as Google Docs, however Office 365 is not free for everyone in our district like Google and it also is designed for those who have the desktop version of Office installed.

Google Docs was built for the cloud and collaboration. Print and printed publications are not what it was designed for. Google excels at making simple text and media documents that can be easily shared, published and edited online with out printing. It is also offered to every single student and staff member in our distinct for free. Businesses pay Google $50 a year per user for this service. It also includes 25 GB of email space that our district does not have to maintain on our servers, web site creation tools, chat and video chat, calendaring and internal video channels.

Take a look at this article from the Hybrid Classroom Blog PICK YOUR POISON: Working with Words on the Computer. It has a good list of pros and cons about both programs. Neither program does everything but both do a good job at what they were originally designed to do.

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