Build Your Course Online - The Blog

Google Groups is a free service which helps groups of people communicate using email and the Web. Every group has a home page hosted by Google where members can start their own discussions, announcement lists, and mailing lists in minutes. Google Groups makes it easier to read and participate in discussions than most commercial course management software, such as Blackboard or WebCT. All the replies to an initial post are gathered on one page. You can bookmark topics you’re interested in, and have new replies to that topic delivered to your inbox. Best of all, there are no pop-ups or banner ads displayed within Google Groups—only Google’s relatively easy to ignore text ads.

Hot Tip: If you also have a G-Mail account from Google, then you can create an interesting course web site using the “Google Sites” for your account. Best of all, G-Mail, Google Calendar, Google Groups, and Google Sites are all free and there are hundreds of widgets you can add.

Really Hot Tip: Google has actually come up with a combination of applications that are all hosted on the Web and offered to you and your couse participants any time from any where on any device that can access the Internet. This combo of apps is called, appropriately, “Google Apps for Education.”

You need to have a domain name, which you can easily get from SiteGround or GoDaddy or some other ISP (see above). It could be your organization’s server, but there are some settings that have to be changed, so it might be easier to do it outside of the organization. When I signed up for a demo account, it took me less than 3 minutes. However, that does not count the time it takes to change the domain name server (DNS) settings on your domain so that they point at the Google servers. This isn’t technically difficult, but if you get it wrong, you won’t be able to use your Google Apps. So be careful or get a techie buddy to help you. Google provides all the help you’ll need, walking you through the process step by step.

Each participant gets: Gmail, including 7 gigabytes of storage and search tools; Google Calendar, users can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others; Google Sites, users can quickly create and publish collaborative web sites; Google Chat, users can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free - anytime, anywhere in the world; Google Docs, online word processing and spreadsheet programs for easy document sharing.

On an ad hoc basis, you can also use other Google applications like Google Talk or Google Groups or even Google Checkout to charge your participants if you’re selling admission to your own courses independently.

You can sign up for a free Google Apps for Education account as an individual if you can prove you work at a bona fide “EDU” or “ORG”. If not, you can still use the “Standard Apps” which include everything I’ve mentioned here. I requested 50 seats and they gave me 200. You can learn more by visiting http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html.

Alternatively, here’s an 11 minute video produced by Google staff to explain the problem they think Google Apps Education is the solution to. It’s a bit long if you have Web-surfing fever, but actually quite helpful in understanding why this may be an important alternative to consider. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRYRbPCHTck

We Love Google (Can you tell?)

Just one last note about Google:

Google is really the leader in Web 2.0 applications, offering a plethora of tools to make your life as an instructor and the learning/study life of your participants much easier. To name just a few:

• Search Related
• Alerts - Get email updates on the topics of your choice
• Blog Search - Find blogs on your favorite topics
• Book Search - Search the full text of books
• Custom Search - Create a customized search experience for your community
• GOOG-411 - Find and connect with businesses from your phone, for free
• Images - Search for images on the web Maps - View maps and get directions
• Notebook - Clip and collect information as you surf the web
• Patent Search - Search the full text of US Patents
• Product Search - Search for stuff to buy
• Scholar - Search scholarly papers
• Special Searches - Search within specific topics
• Toolbar - Add a search box to your browser
• Video - Search for videos on Google Video and YouTube
• Web Search - Search over billions of web pages
• Web Search Features - Find movies, music, stocks, books,
• Learning Tools
• Blogger - You and your participants can each have your own blog or learning groups can create a blog together
• Earth - Explore the world from your computer
• Finance - Business info, news, and interactive charts
• News - Search thousands of news stories and archive the results
• Groups - Study groups can have their own discussion space and mailing list management
• Notebook - Clip and collect information as you surf the web
• Picasa - Individuals or groups can find, edit and share photos
• SketchUp - Build 3D models quickly and easily
• Translate - View web pages in other languages
• YouTube - Watch, upload and share videos; even embed them in your course content.
• Personalizing the User Experience
• Desktop - Search and personalize your computer
• iGoogle - Add news, games and more to the Google home page
• Google HealthNew! - Organize your medical records online
• Mobility Enhancements
• Maps for mobile - View maps and get directions on your phone
• Mobile - Use Google on your mobile phone
• SMS - Use text messaging for quick info
• E-Commerce
• Checkout - Complete online purchases more quickly and securely or use it yourself to sell course content, such as printed readers or access to a password protected web page

Have fun Googling!

claude

Next time: “Easy Online Communication With Your Students.”