Thing #18: Online productivity tools

Open-office seems like a great tool to use as an alternative to Microsoft Office. This office suite offers platforms for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases.

There are many advantages:

• multilingual
• free to download & distribute
• user-friendly, active community forum for support
• can be shared with students to use at home
• runs on all major computing platforms - Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris, Apple Mac
• can open any type of file from other application

Some of the disadvantages:

• It runs slower than Microsoft Office
• Will take some teachers longer to get familiar/make the transition
• Not as advanced/disversified as Microsoft Office
• Not completely compatible with Microsoft Word files
• The user interface is not quite as intuitive, but it can be learned quickly