Thing 13 is about embracing online collaboration software and file-sharing, and I’m glad it has pushed me to get to grips with wikis at long last.
I have already used Google Docs for easy access of documents between home and work, but I haven’t used it in the collaborative sense yet. I can imagine it is quite good for editing a single document, especially very specific data entry into a spreadsheet. It also has the added benefit of being connected to Google, which ensures its popularity by default and makes it easy for other colleagues to give it a go. I don’t plan to download Dropbox though as it’s functions seen very similar to Google Docs.
In contrast to Google Docs, it may take a little more convincing to get colleagues to embrace new wikis as they involve signing up for a new website. As a tester, I signed up for wikispaces a created a small mock wiki for my work at the NSPC Library (which I will probably blog about within the next couple of weeks). It was really easy to set up and to establish a few pages, much like a basic website. The only problem was the lack of people to collaborate with! It may be, with me only working part-time for the library, that there comes a point where this wiki might prove useful for communication with the academic and administrative staff, so I will keep it in mind for future use.
I can see it being very useful for group projects on my Library and Information Studies course (which I started this week) as it will enable collaborative editing of the same documents, including a history of updates, and also has room for discussion in connection with each page.
