Serendipity35

I keep hearing that Google Plus will change things. It will give Facebook a run for its money. It will change education. And maybe it will, but I don't see that happening yet.

At a recent NJEDge EATF meeting, a colleague talked about using Google+’s Hangout feature. The group is investigating synchronous collaboration and communication tools. There are a plethora of option$ - Adobe Connect, Skype, Collaborate, WebEx et al. But that FREE flag flying over Google services is very attractive to educators.

I found a post on wikihow.comabout using G+ for teaching.

Google Plus's Hangouts is a tool that takes the traveling strain out of the teaching process. Teachers can use that time to conduct more virtual classrooms at a greater number of places. This enables institutions to teach more students with a lower number of teachers, thereby saving costs and placing institutions in a position to reward teachers in better ways. The biggest advantage is that the Google Hangouts allows a teacher to teach to ten classrooms at a time. In case there are more, each of the receiving classrooms can relay it to ten more classrooms in turn.


So, you might use the subgroup concept within G+ known as Circles to create a class/group online. That is something we are used to from learning management systems.

I would like to see Google Apps have a G+ level.

The article suggests that you integrate your You Tube and Picasa accounts with your Google+ account so that you can transmit videos and photos and use Power Point presentations,or any file from your screen by clicking the option "share your screen."

And that is what makes Google Plus attractive - the possibilities that arise from connecting it to all the other free Google goodness.

It's not quite there yet. And there certainly aren't enough people (in education especially) using it to really make an impact. Let's hope it doesn't become another Buzz...