G-Suite & iCloud Online Collaboration
If you aren't using online collaboration tools yet, you have been missing out big time. These are such powerful tools that we have at our disposal for the ministry, and we need to learn to use them to the fullest! In this video, we will dive in and do just that.
Whether it's a password-protected, shared list of important church passwords in a spreadsheet, sermon prep, or anything else that you can think of, we should all be doing our work in the cloud now.
I have purposely left out one option that we have... Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is a great alternative and ranks very high in reviews and scores, but it isn't entirely free as is Google Docs and Apple iWork. You can use Microsoft Online for free, but you need to either purchase Microsoft Office as a one-time purchase or as an ongoing monthly subscription to install it on your device. As we need to work with large teams, the pricing and licensing on that could get out of hand. I prefer to steer away from licensing issues all that I can when I can.
iCloud Pages, Numbers, and Keynote
I know, I know, I'm biased. I worked at Apple for several years and am an Apple Certified Trainer... but in my humble opinion iCloud's online office suite is the best out there... especially if we are talking about ease of use and design capabilities. I ditched Microsoft Office many many MANY years ago in favor of OpenOffice/LibreOffice until 2009 when I moved over to the Mac. At that time I began using Apple's Desktop version of iWork, and I have never looked back. They are extremely easy to use, compatible with Microsoft Office, and also very powerful. Today, iWork isn't available just on your Mac, it is an amazing collaboration tool hosted in iCloud.With Apple's iWork, you can work together on documents with others simultaneously from anywhere in the world from your Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome Computers, iPhone, iPad and Android (with a little configuration). See the video for a great demonstration of its capabilities.
G-Suite
G-Suite (Google Apps) is also a great option for online collaboration with Docs, Sheets, Forms, and Slides. It is available on any of the above devices that I mentioned. It is easy to use and it works perfectly along with your domain.com email account that we set up in Module 3.See the video for a demonstration.