Google apps tools

1. For communication: gmail, newsgroups, calendar

Workshop notes
Gmail
Settings

• email labels can be customised
• keyboard shortcuts can be turned on or off
• labels - you can choose to hide them or show them. Labels help you organize your messages into categories To create a label you can create a filter. Step 1 you need to trigger on a specific email and then you click on create a filter with a search and then decide what to do - apply a particular label e.g. UCT and then create a filter.
• filters - you can decide what emails to filter so you are not a slave to your inbox

When receiving an email you can choose to chat

Changing status online
You can change our status online - you can be busy or invisible or available by clicking on the options next to your status which shows a green dot

Tasks
you can edit your tasks and change when they are due.  When you have an email open you go to More you can put in a due date some notes on the task, click on the arrow to do this. If you now go to calendar it will be populated there.  Tasks under my calendar should be selected.  

Calendar
You can set appointments etc. In gmail two other useful features are labs you can get free sms on Virgin and MTN.  You can develop canned responses. You need to play around and see what it is you are needing.  
The idea of having one identity - more and more people are moving away from having two identities - a social identity and a work identity. Students don’t seem to use email anymore, they are using other forms of communication.  People also feel bombarded with emails. Some companies have moved away from emails.  It is also possible to use google chat for teaching and learning. Most students these days have smart phones.
You can filter your twitter account too by joining twitter through gmail.
Newsgroups
Click on more and then even more on the black tool bar on top and select groups and then you should see HELTASA google group workshop on the right hand side. It allows you to create a mailing list. You can share a document using this list and sending emails to the members who are in this group.

Google sites
You can use google site as your course template - no html. https://googlesites.com/

Google drive
You can collaborate using this by working on a document together in real time.  You can create a whole lot of different types of documents.
You need to be careful about how you structure your folders. Anything that you drop into a shared folder is automatically shared with all the participants.
Students can create a folder and they can give you edit rights to a document, which you will be able to see immediately. You can have a document under various folders. The changes are made automatically under all folders.
You can share things with individuals or groups and give people different rights e.g. you can allow people to edit  or just to view etc.
You can also store other things like movies, voice files, ppts, pdfs etc.
You can create a document, use different colour texts for multiple authors, make comments. You need to have some kind of agreement as to how people are going to cooperate. It is useful to create documents from various versions and rename document.
It doesn’t integrate with any reference management system.

Google spreadsheets and google forms
There are three different views: spreadsheet, live form and edit.  You can use gadgets by clicking insert to get word clouds, tables etc.
In devising a questionnaire you can forward the respondents to various question options.
You can use it in real time so instead of clicker system you can use a google form.
You need a pdf printer to capture the response summaries.
You can put your own message in at the end.
To download results of survey: First go to edit form to more actions and click on this and then edit confirmation  publish summary must be ticked. You then go back to the live form and replace  viewform in the url to viewanalytics.

Blogger
You can use it for a course and keep all the information on the course like the timetable etc. All the things that would go on an LMS you could put on the blog. You can also have links to various tools you are using.
It is useful for particular kinds of activity for example for students to read and respond to.
If you want to change your title or your template you can change it at any time.
You have to blog on a regular basis if you want people to keep interested. It is something that needs to grow. Various authors will require different registers.