There is no way that in a single post I could cover all the wonders of Google Documents. I do believe though that Google docs will serve as an excellent topic for my first substantive post.
The largest benefit that I see in using Google docs in your organization is that it makes collaborating with peers an effortless activity. It doesn't hurt that it's also FREE! When you utilize traditional word processing software to work on a document with others, you significantly lower the efficiency in which you can produce that document. Unless you are physically next to the person you're working with, any attempt at cooperative production is destroyed. The experience of editing a Word document by sending it back and forth via e-mail is hardly expedient. The process is long, arduous, and at times confusing. Check out this video for a more crafty display of why this process has become outdated.
The real-time collaboration that Google docs provides is necessary for a college students' busy schedule. Whenever you have a spare moment, you can log in and make some edits to that group project of yours. It is no longer necessary to coordinate multiple schedules to find that half an hour time-slot on a Sunday night to meet up and frantically review everyone's work.
Personally, my projects with Student Senate have been transformed by the incorporation of Google docs. For those of you who are involved with student government you may be familiar with the, sometimes laborious, task of drafting up resolutions. Generally when I have gone about the task of creating a resolution there have been two or three other Senate members that I'm working with. The most popular method of creating these has been to e-mail a bare-bones draft out to all of those involved. However, this process is frequently preyed upon by the problems highlighted in the video listed above. Because there were four different copies of the resolution being circulated, I never could tell which copy was the most up-to-date.
Google docs to the rescue! Now when I draft a resolution I put the bare-bones copy into a Google doc and share the document with all of the necessary people. Whenever I need to see the most up-to-date copy I simply have to log into the document and there it is. This single use of Google docs has saved me several hours each and every week that I'm working on a resolution.
If you don't use Google docs, give it a try! I think that you'll be surprised with how useful they become.
All the best!
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