Vector 2: Leading Solution Providers

Introduction

Today's students are digital natives (Prensky, 2001). They grow up with all different kinds of technologies. They feel safer and more comfortable expressing themselves and interacting with other people online. Therefore, collaboration technologies have been widely used in K to 12 and higher education to improve students' learning. Collaboration technologies are computer-based collaborative tools that are designed to help cooperative group work. By using collaboration technologies, group members, everywhere around the world, can easily share information, edit work and complete a task together.

Types of Collaboration Tools

There are a great number of collaboratipn tools out there. How do you choose the right tool to do your collaborative work?

There are many different types of collaboratipn tools that support many types of needs. First, you need to decide the purpose of your work. Then, you can choose the one you need. Let's look at the types of collaboration tools.

Types	Description	Popular Tools
Collaboration Platform / Team collaboration Workspaces	This refers to collaborative software with computer-supported and web-based workspace. These group collaboration tools allow students or individuals to communicate with each other and work together to achieve a common goal.	Google Wave; Google Groups; Basecamp; Wiggio: Sosius, etc.
Collaborative Writing	This refers to writing interactively in groups. In the process of collaboration, two or more people compose the complete or partial text of a web-based document, contribute components to a web-based document, edit, review, or modify a web-based document.	Google Docs; Zoho Writer; Buzzword; Writeboard; Quicktopic; TextFlow
File / Document sharing	This allows you to share a file with friends or a group of people more effectively. We no longer need to use e-mails to send out the files.	Microsoft Live Mesh; Dropbox; Google Docs; Zoho
Mind Mapping & Diagramming	This allows you to create a thinking or mind map online and be able to share with other people who also have the access to modify and edit the map.	Bubbl.us; Creately; MindMeister; Comapping
Video / Audio Conferencing	This allows two-way audio and video interaction between two or more people who are in various locations.	Elluminate Live; Skype; Google chat and video
Virtual Meeting Rooms	This refers to the online meeting room that has features like video and sound connection, chat facility, digital whiteboard, desktop sharing, poling tools and so on.	Elluminate; Wimba Classroom; Adobe Connect; Microsoft Live Meeting; Zoho Meeting; OpenMeetings
Instant Messaging / Chat	This allows individuals to chat online and talk live.	Skype; Google chat and video; Google Wave; Yahoo Messenger; Windows Live Messenger; eBuddy; Zoho Chat; Campfire
Web Presenting	This allows individuals to present and save their slideshow online.	Slideshare; ZohoShow
Wikis	This refers to a piece of server software that allows individuals to create and edit the web page content with any web browser.	PBWiki; Wikidot; WetPaint; Dokuwiki
Website	This allows individuals to create their own website.	GoogleSite; Wordpress

Google Sites

From a learning perspective, Google sites offers students and teachers an easy and quick way to create and share webpages. Students can work interactively and collaboratively online to present their ideas, share their thoughts with each other, and accomplish an academic task together. Teachers use Google Sites to post updated news, class announcements, assignments, or lessons. Students and teachers will have more interaction.

Google Sites is an easy-to-use website service, which allows users to create their own website quickyly without any installation. Although the graphical interface cannot be modified completely, users have the control of embedding web-widgets and other google products. The following are some of the essential features:

Google Sites

Features

Quick - creating a web page with a single click
Easy - creating a web page and editing its content easily without the knowledge of HTML
Customized - designing your own look of a web page
Choices - providing various web page templates to users to get started easily
Uploading up to 10MB files and attachments. 10GB storage space in Google Sites for each Google Apps account
Other Google products can be easily embedded on Google Sites
A group of people can work collaboratively on Google Sites

Google Sites Tutorial

These series of YouTube videos teach you how to use Google Sites:

Google Sites #1 Original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1B_q_EiVHI&feature=related

Google Sites #2 Original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW3OElLssgE&feature=related

Google Sites #3 Original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKXFDdwLLgA&feature=related

Google Sites #4 Original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDxXWf4OXzU&feature=related

Google Docs

From a learning perspective, Google Docs allows students to work on group projects collaboratively. Students can communicate, brainstorm on a shared document on Google Docs and complete a task together. Teachers can assign students group work and develop students' teamwork skills.

Google Docs is a web-based document service, which allows users to create, store, and share documents, spreadsheets, forms, and presentations online. The following are some of the essential features:

	Google Docs
Features	Free Easily and quickly share and work on the same document with individuals who are in different locations Do collaborative work at the same time Like online Microsoft Office programs Files are stored on a Google server. Files and documents are constantly saved on a Google server.

The following two YouTube videos explain how to share and collaborate in Google Docs and new features of Google Docs:

Original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POIR37Hmydg"

Original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_hJ3R8jEZM

Comparisons and Advantages

Google Docs and Google Sites are brilliant collaboration tools that can enhance students' learning and develop their collaboration skills. These collaboration tools have been widely used in k-12 and higher education as well as business. There are some other similar collaboration tools that are just as popular as Google Docs and Google Sites. How do we know which one is the best one? It all depends on your need and purpose. We have compared Google Docs and Google Sites with some other exciting products and services below. Hopefully, this will help you choose your best collaboration tool.

Google Docs vs. Zoho

	Google Docs	Zoho
Cost	free	free
Discussions in Real Time	supported	supported
Ease of Setup - No installation required	easy	easy
Participant Ease-of-Use	excellent	excellent
Ease of E-mailing and Sharing with Users on the Web	excellent	excellent
Ease of Converting and Downloading to other Formats (e.g. Open office formats, PDF, etc.)	excellent	excellent
Ease of Publishing to Blog options	excellent	excellent
Central Document Storage - Shared documents or files are saved and stored online, so you can access from anywhere on the web.	excellent	excellent
Able to Upload the Existing Standard Formats and Edit them	Good (RTF, DOC, XLS, PPT)	excellent (RTF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, PPT)
Conversation Archive - allows you to store conversations and find them later	fine	fine
Support for Personal Relationships - has the feature that allows you to share personal background information and know your fellow participants	weak	weak
User Interface	very simple and minimal	looks appealing with lots of options; resembles regular Word Processor
Skins	Not available	Has a variety of skins to fit your need
PDF and Zipped HTML Generation	excellent - relatively much faster than Zoho	No Zipped HTML File generation option. Relatively slow PDF generation
Online Powerpoint	good	excellent - provides more cliparts, audio shapes, templates etc.
Advantages	The integration with Google account is the biggest advantage. Spreadsheets application is good with the options of formating, formula and style. Good for small editing.	Has adjustable click-drag page margin option, page view and page setup. Spreadsheets are relatively much better than Google spreadsheets with a lot of options. Has latest DOCX Office 2007 format support. Allows users to customixe toolbars. Unlike Google Docs, Zoho allows users to edit files with side bar visible at the same time. Relatively fast DOC and DOCX format generation. Very rarely makes you miss MS Word. Can use it offline with Google Gears.

Google Sites vs. WordPress

	Google Sites	WordPress
Cost	free	free
First Time Setup	Easy. Only 10 mouse clicks. No code or behind the scenes files required.	No code required; First time installation might be difficult for users who don't know how to create a database and use FTP.
Content Management	Only need to go to a page and upload the file as an attachment or click "edit" to change the text. This allows users to easily operate documents and information management.	Authoring and file sharing are done from the control panel. This allows users to publish more carefully edited posts and pages.
Pages Functionality	5 types of pages to choose from: regular web page, dashboard, announcements, file cabinet, or list.	Only offers regular web pages.
Ease of Use	Easier for first timer	Easy
Design	Limited pre-packaged themes with limited control of the layout and look of elements.	Hundreds of themes available with the ability to change the layout and look.
Extensibility	Does not have any extensions, but is possible to embed content such as video, Google Docs documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.	Has lots of plugins to improve the functionality, management, monitoring, and design of the site.
Collaboration	Excellent. Users have the control of who can view the site, change the site, and manage the site. Collaborators do not need to have a Gmail account, but have to get a Google account with their current e-mail address.	More limited. It also allows collaborators to manage the site.

Report Card

Both Google Docs and Google Sites are great collaboration tools in terms of the learning perspective. Although Zoho and WordPress in some aspects are much better than Google Docs and Google Sites, they integrate with other Google products and services better and they seem more popular. Therefore, Google Docs and Google Sites both receive an A- in this category.

Discussion Questions

Question 1: As an educator, when it comes to choose a best collaboration tool for your students, what are your considerations?

Question 2: Besides Google Docs and Zoho, can you share another collaboration tool with us that has similar features?

Links

Move on to Vector 3: Stability and Usability

Return to Module 8

References

Interaction and Learning Unit (ILU) at the IT University of Copenhagen.(n.d.) Online Collaboration Technology. Retrieved from https://itucph.onconfluence.com/display/ILU/Online+collaboration+technology

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Quinn, L. S. (2009). Comparing Options for Collaboration Software. Retrieved from http://www.idealware.org/articles/options_collaboration_software.php

Spring, M. (1997). Retrieved from http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~spring/cas/node31.html