FREE! BuzzWord by Adobe
Posted by LisaHill - 29/04/09 at 02:04 pm
Subject Matter: Online word processing, Sharing Documents, Peer Editing
Grades: Middle School & up, Business, Administrative
Buzzing Along with Online Word Processing
I’m starting a new review on Adobe’s teaching curricula, and was directed to Buzzword. Buzzword is Adobe’s free, online word processing application (yes, it’s free!). This is something new, and is associated with Adobe’s beta Acrobat.com. Acrobat.com is Adobe’s free web-based collaboration for sharing documents, online conferencing and creating PDF files. What’s all the buzz? Read and find out.
Buzzword is a free, online word processing application where teachers, students, business associates, etc. can share documents with multiple authorship, offer edits in one document, insert material, etc. – all on the web. It’s slick.
Tool Bar Finesse
I don’t get excited about toolbars, but Buzzword’s toolbar is just plain fun. It’s colorful, whizzes back and forth, and allows you to expand and contract each function. Easy to use, understand and appreciate.
Co-Authorship is a Snap
Whether it’s in class or in businesses, papers need to be reviewed and edited, tables and pictures selected or modified, and this all takes time. On a class rough draft, teachers and peers need to add comments. Classmates collaborating on one project have to provide input, and schedules don’t always coincide. It’s easy to lose track who’s reviewed what document. With Buzzword, not a problem.
Click on the Share button at the bottom of the screen, and invite others to co-author, review or read your document. Users can also view prior document versions, so material is not lost.
Other Functions
Buzzword allows users to spellcheck in 19 different languages. Synchronator automatically saves changes, or informs you to save changes. Documents can be imported and exported from different applications, and saved as a wide variety of file formats.
I’ve only highlighted the main features of Buzzword, so there’s plenty more to explore and appreciate.
Yes, there are other free word processing applicatons online. The advantage is this program is simple to operate, no downloading is required, and it’s cohesive with Adobe’s free web conferencing application. Give it a try!
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4; Windows XP; Internet Explorer 6.x, Firefox 2.x; Flash Player 90.47
Contact: Adobe.com
Cost: Free
April 30th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Lisa,
Thanks for the kind write up. We’re always pleased to see educators discovering Buzzword and have collected some great success stories in the classroom.
I notice that you also cover music education. If you like the collaborative nature of Buzzword for documents, you might want to take a look at NoteFlight (www.noteflight.com). NoteFlight is not an Adobe product, but was conceived by the founder as “Buzzword for music scores”. It also runs in the Flash Player, supports collaboration, and runs in the Cloud.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Hi Rick
Thanks for the + reply. Sure, I’ll take a look at Noteflight. Music is an area where it’s somewhat difficult to find good software material, so appreciate the lead. Oh, and we enjoy paddling a bit too (on Lake Washington near Seattle).
Cheers! Lisa