Friday, August 26, 2011

CPD23 Thing 13 – A Tool Needs a (current) Use to be Useful

 Installation Fatigue and Use

Yep I’ve got this so I’d better just admit it. This Thing is all about online collaboration tools – Google Docs, Dropbox, wikis.

Google Docs (bless it) is already ‘there’ I now have so much Google stuff going on, Dropbox was the usual pain to downloading to one pc, downloading to phone,  sync’ing (should that be ‘that sinking feeling’ instead?)…  There’s the whole looking through how they all work, and then there’s the it’s a week later and I’ve found no actual need that they supply for me currently.  Which is making me feel a bit guilty.

A Tool Needs a  (current) Use to be Useful (and appreciated)

So, I understand that a lot of folk find Google Docs and Dropbox incredibly useful, I’ve read through various blogs, I see that.  Just saying that for me currently I don’t need it. Now next week that might cheerily change if there’s suddenly something I need to collaborate on with lots of folk outwith my own organisation. I can actually think of things in future I’m intending doing that they might be useful for for instance. And I can think of other people’s Google Docs documents they’ve shared that I’ve accessed in the last few months and found useful on various subjects. So I’m not saying never re me creating stuff on it. Someone mentioned uploading presentations to Dropbox as alternative / added insurance to memory stick carrying for instance, that I could see myself doing…

But Wikis are inordinately lovely

Wikis I shall cheerfully admit to liking a good deal.  We have a staff handbook one for work which I don’t populate or up-date nearly as often as I probably should and it took me a long time to really use it much.  But I up-date it a lot more this year than before, and more regularly, so we’re building a proper relationship finally. And any time my Asst Lbn goes on hol for a length of time I find myself in it and glad for it as I remind myself how something works that normally she does. I also use other people’s wikis for various work purposes and like those too.

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