I have played around the Zoho writer and Google docs for a few months now, and I must say that I think this change in the whole idea of applications and software is an exciting one. I’ve found that they work almost identically to MS productivity tools, and documents created in these applications open and function perfectly normally in MS Office. These online productivity tools could potentially replace expensive applications such as MS Word, Excel, etc. because they’re free and accessible anywhere. Other than the necessity of being live online, I can see no reason to insist on MS products for our school PCs. Users can save their work in microsoft-friendly formats too, so they’re useful to users who might not be Zoho/Google Docs users.

Imagine my disappointment when I found that Google Docs is blocked at my school. I haven’t checked Zoho. I don’t know why. I don’t know why such a tool would be threatening to the network or to student safety. Perhaps the ability to publish a document wide is the objection that the district has to these tools. It is certainly too bad, because this seems like a huge “gift” to school districts strapped for funding!