Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Google Docs and Skype

Verity Harlick (Principal at St Leonard's School) and Megan Odgers (Principal at Ravensbourne School) wanted to begin using Google Docs (documents) to collaborate together on join projects. Google documents is a resource provided as a part of the Google Apps (applications).

Google documents allows you to upload a document you have worked on, or start a new document and share this with other people. You can then both make changes to the same document, at the same time or different time and at the same place or different places. This would be a fantastic tool for syndicate and staff meetings, if you are all planning a unit of work, everyone can talk and add to the same document at the meeting all at once.

All google apps are free and when you sign up for one you have a username to sign in with to all of the other apps.

Verity and Megan could see a lot of uses for this tool as they often work collaboratively and their schools are similar sizes and down the road from each other so often what will work in one school can also work in the other.

Next we tackled Skype using Skype to speak to one another and to other Skype users has added advantages to ringing one another. Skype also has a chat feature and documents can be sent by dragging them into the chat writing box and pressing enter. There are lots of advantages to being able to see the people you are speaking to and to speak easily to multiple people. Both Megan and I were able to talk to Verity once she returned to school at the same time.

When I left they had already Skyped a few times that day. I hope these tools make things easier for them.
They both picked up how to use these things easily, google docs in a lot of ways works quite like email, well looks similar so they were able to transfer these skills.

The biggest problem was passwords and sign ins. I know how annoying it can be having so many usernames and passwords, I have tried to make most of mine the same. Sometimes though a certain application has requirements of passwords etc that mean you have to change your usual one, and once you add multiple email accounts things can get pretty messy.

One thing that seems to work for me is keeping a document on my computer called LOGINS. It is a list of all of the things I have signed up for with the passwords etc. I know anyone using my computer could see them, but there is nothing on there that is highly sensitive. One advantage of this is they are all in one place. Most importantly I have to remember everytime I sign in to a new thing I put that information into the document. Whenever it is possible I check the option box to have my computer remember the usernames and passwords.

If other people have different systems to solve this problem please comment on the blog.

1 comment:

  1. It was wonderful having Disa at Ravensbourne School. It's so valuable having one-to-one time with facilitators. The children also learned heaps. Hands -on is very effective for teachers and children. Looking forward to having you again!

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