Instructional Technology, All things Google, 21st Century Skills, Web 2.0 and beyond . . .


The Complete Guide to Google Wave

Have you caught the Google Wave yet? Well, if you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I love using Google Docs and the new Google Wave has been designed to help groups of people collaborate on documents on the web. To me, Google Wave is your email on steriods with all the cool Google collaboration tools built in. I truly loathe sending emails back and forth, back and forth, till their size gets so large and the true reason for the email is lost in all the many emails in my inbox! Then, when trying to figure out exactly what everyone is trying to say, that gets lost in the shuffle too. Google Wave takes care of all that as long as you understand it is like using your email but without all the tons of emails you have to sort through to get your job done. I have to work smarter and not harder and this cool tool will help me do just that. Try it and share how it works for you! Here is a great guide to help you in catching the Google Wave! Checkout this video that helps to explain Google Wave better. Enjoy!

Mashups by Google

Google Mashups combine content or data from different web sites into new applications. A mashup often involves a map, photo, video and/or news. Educators are using Mashups for so many things in the classroom such as displaying flickr photos on a spinning sphere to displaying the locations of the 30 most recent earthquakes in the world on a map. Using Popfly is the way to do mashups. However, you will need to install Microsoft’s Silverlight which is a plug-in that delivers interactive applications. This is a great tool to check out and experiment with. Send me a comment and let me know how you like this tool and how you are using it. Thanks!