If you keep up with the news, over the past couple of weeks you have seen the release and large discussion that has ensued since Google released one of it’s newest products: Google Documents and Spreadsheets. I have enjoyed reading all sorts of articles about the possibilities of Office 2.0… an online competitor to the colossal Microsoft Office suite. But what are the ramifications in regard to academic life? Can Google really be a competitor in the entrenched battlefield of education? What does it have to offer?

In 1987 Chickering and Gamson wrote an article expounding Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education and in 1986 Chickering and Ehrman rewrote the principles Using Technology as a Lever. As you read over the principles you notice that the first two principles are Using Technology to Enrich and Extend Faculty-Student Contact and Using Technology to Enrich and Extend Student-Student Cooperation. Today Phil Windley posted an article on ZDNet entitled: “Web office is about collaboration. ” In this article he brings up the one thing that online office systems have that off-line systems don’t: collaboration.

Up until now educators have said that it was best to accomplish the teacher-student and student-student interaction using e-mail and so forth. Google Documents and Spreadsheets presents an unique and new sphere for students to collaborate online in real time with teachers and with each other. Google Documents can be edited in REAL-TIME with a person thousands of miles away. Google Spreadsheets has a chat screen that opens when ever another collaborator logs into so they can chat in real time while they edit the spreadsheet. The academic advantages of being able to collaborate on a document in real time with some one in a different building on campus, or half way across the world are invaluable. Two people could co-author an article, or entire classes could brainstorm for an activity. They wouldn’t have to be in the same place, or even online at the same time. In fact, In researching this article I just saw that Google is currently promoting a Global Warming Student Speakout using Google Docs and Spreadsheets to collaborate in an online “brainstorming session.”

Granted, Google Docs has a long way to go before it can compete with Microsoft Word in education (footnotes and other references come to mind), but Google is notorious for releasing products and then adding features as the user base grows. They clearly have education in mind with their recent releases of sites directly directed at Educators and Google Apps for Education and other long term projects like Google Book Search and Google Scholar. I’m sure they are not only going to get the needed tools that students are already used to, but add many other features that change they way students collaborate and learn. Going along with my article from yesterday ; students will also be more motivated to participate because there is an added social component to homework.

One thing is for sure, Microsoft Office is only one generation away from extinction if they don’t create free collaboration tools of their own. If the rising generation of college students do begin to use the web for word processing and other tasks, they will continue to do so when they enter the work force in the years to come. Students are growing up using the internet and are used to having their entire lives online. Entire social societies are created online. One day, I believe Google Docs and/or some other online word processing suite will fit right into that sphere. What do you think?