Collaborate with Google Docs

[I first posted this information to my old blog, On My Mac, on 1/16/2008]

I am going to have a teaching assistant this semester, so I need a way to share student records with him. I think I have found the answer with Google Docs, which offers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. If we only work with the online copies, not files on our own computers, coordination should be possible. The following tutorial by the Common Craft Show explains the basic principles.

Google Docs in Plain English

I still have one concern, though. I can control who has access to which document, and I can say who can view the document and who can edit it. That sounds good, but I notice that Google is not serving the documents via a secure connection. It does not do this for Gmail either, though, and I have never heard any problems about that. For more information, see Google's Privacy and Security statement.