"The weakness of thinking machines is that they actually believe all the information they receive, and react accordingly." ~Dune: The Machine Crusade

Thing 13 - Google Docs, Wikis, and Dropbox

Google docs is a great tool to use personally and professionally. I use it at work in place of a flash drive. I kept losing them so now, it's all in the cloud.

I've been using Wikis for years now - good for distance learning and group projects. We used them at the library to create a Technology Task Force in an effort to get gaming into the library. Gaming never took off because of our budget, but it was a good tool for the job.

Dropbox is good if you have your admin rights on your computer. At work I have my desk, and then I work on any one of 8 other desks. We cannot put Dropbox on all of these desks. so it's useless. But a great idea for a smaller or more innovative operation.

A co-worker had a great idea the other day. We would loan out flash drives so patrons could save a letter or resume and then attach it to an email. These flash drives have now all been stolen. So, why don't we encourage people to use Google Docs? For one, people have a hard time using Yahoo - much less Google. So, we would need to educate them about this. It would be super if we could hold classes on how to use Google - sign up for it, then play with all that Google has to offer and learn how to operate "in the cloud."

There is so much out there that we use but our patrons are still struggling with rather simple technological issues. I think our real obligation is getting them ramped up to function in this ever-expanding tech world.