The presentation on Dropbox tonight was great. It was nice to hear about actual uses in the classroom and the interesting ways that students have figured out to use Dropbox. I like the idea of students building their own tools to create and collaborate on group projects. Here are some other ideas for using Dropbox.
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Google Docs is another tool that can be used to create, share and collaborate on documents. This editing and sharing can be done live. Our experiment with Google Docs was a good one. I like the idea that multiple people could work on a project together and that each could make edits to the same document at the same time. We did run into problems, though when someone would edit or delete a piece of text, or a page break and it would move everyone else's work around. I think working on a finished product where everyone has separate assignments in the document would be difficult. Brainstorming, sharing ideas, and building a rough draft might be a little better suited to having multiple users editing a document at the same time.
We also learned about Google+. It's a bit like Facebook and Twitter, where you can friend, follow, and share ideas with other people. It has a couple of cool features like the ability to create groups of friends, called circles, so that you can share information with the groups of people who you feel would find your post relevant/interesting.
Another great feature of Google+ is called a Hangout. You can video or text chat with 10 friends, sharing documents or your screen. It seems like a great way to hold a video conference. Skype works great when there is only 1 person to connect with, but if you were trying to meet up with more people, Google+ might be a better solution.
I'd like to try this out a little more before deciding whether or not I will use Google+ or Hangouts in the future.
Another great feature of Google+ is called a Hangout. You can video or text chat with 10 friends, sharing documents or your screen. It seems like a great way to hold a video conference. Skype works great when there is only 1 person to connect with, but if you were trying to meet up with more people, Google+ might be a better solution.
I'd like to try this out a little more before deciding whether or not I will use Google+ or Hangouts in the future.
Finally, we had a guest teacher give a dance lesson via Skype. I was impressed with how well it went. Some good points to remember when hosting a Skype lecture or guest presenter:
- The classroom teacher needs to be the primary teacher in the classroom. Discipline problems, side conversations, and other issues would be very difficult for a presenter using Skype to manage.
- Have a mark or a card to indicate who gets to speak and ask questions. Preferably, this mark should be near the camera so that the guest presenter can see and talk with the student.
- I think it is important to keep the presentation short. Our class was about 20 minutes and we were expected to be moving and participating through the entire lesson. Even though we had a high level on engagement, I could see some students loosing interest after a while.