I love that I was able to craft this presentation using Google Docs. Nevertheless, this is a cautionary tale.
Thursday January 7, 2009 8:30pm CST
The familiar startup chime of my MacBook initiates my focus on the task of preparing this presentation for Friday's staff meeting.
My goal: Quickly compose thoughts on an equity workshop I attended a month earlier in such a way as to engage my audience of skeptical colleagues.
My first click of the mouse was on the overused orange PowerPoint P on my dock. My subsequent click, after an "I shoulda had a V-8 head slap," was Firefox. My intent was to ditch the PowerPoint in favor of my Google Docs account. I surmised I could engage my colleagues more effectively by crafting a minimalist yet lean and clean presentation which I could share with my colleagues in the morning. I could post a url, invite them into the presentation and take comments and feedback. It was the perfect blend of modeling effective tech integration and presenting salient points from teh workshop.
Thursday January 7, 2009 9:30pm CST
The bedtime rituals have me take a hiatus from crafting what I hope to be a presentation worth paying attention to in the morning.
Thursday January 7, 2009 11:36pm CST
I make the final save of my presentation after 212 revisions.
Friday January 8, 2009 6:50am CST
I arrive in the Hopkins North Junior High Media Center, and hear, again, that welcome sound of the MacBook chime. I Open Firefox and arrive at my iGoogle homepage. I click on Documents from my menu, select the presentation named Culture_Behavior, and... Wait a minute! What's this white screen? Why are all the buttons and links on the page showing up as simple black text? More important, Where is my presentation! Ugggghhhh Google Fail!
Friday January 8, 2009 7:15am CST
Our presentation over the equity workshop has begun. I step to the front of the room and confess, "I had a great presentation to explain what I took away from this workshop. But, uh, yeah, well it's just a blank white screen at Google Docs right now." I continue, and my points are well-received (what I can recall, that is).
Remember, I love using Google Docs. But what transpired yesterday has me questioning the reliance on cloud applications when it comes to what I'm calling mission critical work. Sure, I could have downloaded the presentation Thursday night and opened it Friday morning in PowerPoint, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of cloud applications? Moreover, that's not the point here.
My point is to call to light one of the concerns cloud computing critics have been expressing over the last 2 years or so in which such applications have become en vogue: just how reliable are they.
Based on Twitter posts from my PLN, and the pages too numerous to count on the Google Help page yesterday, I was not the only one in a quandary with this Google Fail. Globally, ordinary folks like me were relying heavily on Google Docs to make presentations on Friday. And, with a simple glitch, we were doused.
Looking forward, I'm still using Google Docs to craft my presentations in order to engae and involve my audience in what I speaking about. However, I'm going to go with my gut and download that file, just in case.
My point is to call to light one of the concerns cloud computing critics have been expressing over the last 2 years or so in which such applications have become en vogue: just how reliable are they.
Based on Twitter posts from my PLN, and the pages too numerous to count on the Google Help page yesterday, I was not the only one in a quandary with this Google Fail. Globally, ordinary folks like me were relying heavily on Google Docs to make presentations on Friday. And, with a simple glitch, we were doused.
Looking forward, I'm still using Google Docs to craft my presentations in order to engae and involve my audience in what I speaking about. However, I'm going to go with my gut and download that file, just in case.
-SchlegsofTonka
No comments:
Post a Comment