1. Assignment 3:
Software
Evaluation
by
Angela Crawford
S

2. Audience Focus…
S All Intermediate and High Schools in the district
S Grades 6-12
S All subject areas (Core subjects, Electives and Athletics)
S Online office (Zoho and Google Docs)
S Used for Cooperative Learning groups and Team
Collaboration on class projects

3. Technical Requirements…
S Computer/Processor
S RAM required
S Internet Explorer/Mozilla Firefox/Safari
S Limit to 1GB of storage per workstation

4. Software Category…
S Word Processing (e.g. Word)
S Spreadsheets (e.g. Excel)
S Presentation (e.g. Powerpoint)
S Graphics (e.g. clipart on MS Office software)
S Email (e.g. Groupwise, Yahoo, Gmail etc.)

5. “ZOHO” features…
S Administrative Console: allows teachers to monitor actions
done by students and set guidelines for them
S Cooperative Groups: allow teams to access, edit and change
files, participate in a group chat and send each other emails
anytime, anywhere
S Allows workers to collaborate in real-time
S Only allow certain participants access to the files without others
being allowed to see what each group is doing
S Allows participants to store multiple projects in one centralized
location

6. “ZOHO” Pros/Cons…
Advantages Disadvantages
No Long-term Contract No intranet capability
Require no disk space to the Unable to operate in an area
user that does not have high-speed
internet
No additional software is Can get costly to the school
required district if more workstations are
added to the network
Allows team members to work Only offer the basic MS Office
from anywhere features compared to the MS
Office software installed on the
hard drive
If a computer crashes, the files
are stored safely in a
centralized location

7. “Google Docs” features…
S Existing files can uploaded in a variety of formats such as pdf,
html, and MS Office
S Allows teams to access, edit and change files, participate in a
group chat and send each other emails anytime, anywhere
S Collaboration can take place in real-time
S Only allow certain participants access to the files without others
being allowed to see what each group is doing
S Post documents to your personal blog
S Educators are able to help team members by joining their
groups

8. “Google Doc’s” Pros/Cons…
Advantages Disadvantages
Documents: saved in a variety of Only allow 1GB of storage
formats such as pdf and ppt
Offline viewing: documents will Risk of viruses attacking files
reload once it is back online
Plug-ins: allows documents to be Images uploaded can only be 2MB
uploaded from MS Office each
Revisions feature: viewers can see Spreadsheets are limited to 256
where changes have been made columns, 400,000 rows and 200
sheets
Apps available for cell phones
Members can work on files
anywhere

9. Technology Coordinator’s recommendation…
Google Doc’s
S It is user more user friendly than ZOHO
S More familiar with the Google features therefore making it more
comfortable to use Google Doc’s
S It has an Icloud feature that will allow me to post comments on my
Iphone or my MAC
S I feel students would prefer using a feature from Google because
it is what they know…I know I did because when I am learning
new material I like to work on a program that I am most familiar
with