Using Google Docs

Google docs is an online word processor which allows you to create, edit, format etc., documents with other users collaboratively and concurrently. It does this by the use of Cloud Computing - see previous blog entry for more on Cloud Computing- and it allows you to collaborate with other users in something known as 'real time'. 

This is a term used to refer to a computer's level of responsiveness which a user perceives as adequately instantaneous or which makes it possible for the computer to keep up with some sort of external process. In looking up an example of this other than Google Docs, I found the most perfect and accurate depiction of this concept on a site known as Worldometers whereby one can research World Population, Government and Economics, Society and Media, Environmental, Food, Water, Energy and Health statistics of which the data is to the millisecond and available virtually immediately! A few benefits of real-time processing is the efficiency and accuracy of it, one can get the exact, to-the-millisecond facts and figures about the data that they're researching, its benefits are beyond abundant and its potential uses in both businesses and organisations extremely profitable but a crucially important point is where the input data being process is coming from and the reliability of this source. 

Some of the features of Google Docs include (as stated in an overview of Google Docs by Google Support): 

• Uploading Word documents and converting them to Google documents 

• Adding flair and formatting to your documents by adjusting margins, spacing, fonts, and colors 

• Inviting other people to collaborate on a document with you, giving them edit, comment or view access 

• Collaborating online in real time and chatting with other collaborators — right from inside the document 

• Viewing your document's revision history and roll back to any previous version 

• Downloading a Google document to your desktop as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip file 

• Translating a document to a different language Emailing your documents to other people as attachments 

Our assignment is to create a user guide/video/website for Google Docs and a few of our predominant objectives are to achieve a mature and professionally presented formatting to our user guide, to present a minimum of four features Google Docs has to offer, preferably unique and varied features, whilst using specialised vocabulary relevant to our topics, correct grammar and spelling usage, and finally, clear and precise information and/or instructions. 

I used this week's lesson to research ways in which I could film the screen of a computer in order to create a Google Docs tutorial-styled user video but each method I found to achieve this required software to be installed or program updates and on the whole, they were impractical and required time which could have been better spent on more reasonable and time-efficient presentation methods. Halfway through the lesson therefore, I made the alteration of creating a video not by recording the screen, but by taking screenshots of different features of Google Docs, compiling a video out of them and later adding a voice over walk-through. This is a simple method of carrying out this assignment yet effective and it will provide time to put greater consideration into the chosen features and how to best explain them and their functional uses, along with the configuration of the video itself. 

If I were to repeat this week's lesson, my main improvement to my learning would have to be to have made this transition quicker than I did because I wasted a half hour's worth of research on something that wasn't necessary to learn about in the end. I did however, in the process of this mistake, gain a great deal of knowledge about Google Docs as a program that I had not previously known so despite the negatives, a few positive points ensued. 

My main sources should you wish to find more information on these topics: 

Overview of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

What is Real Time?