4.5 Technology assisted school counselor and principal collaboration  (Page 12/16)

Interactive/productivity tools

This category of technology tools helps educators to make their collaborations more fruitful in the form of creativity and productivity. Administrators and school counselors can co-create documents, collect data, use project task management applications, and more – all online without barriers of space, pace, or time. Following are description of such tools for various purposes:

Online collaboration suites

Imagine that a common productivity suite such as Microsoft Office™ was available to you online. And, what if users could log in and work together on one or more of the different aspects that a productivity suite offers such as creating documents, organizing a calendar, communicating with others, collecting and analyzing data, managing projects, etc. That is what online collaboration suites such as the following are designed to do:

37 Signals . http://www.com/ This online set of collaborative tools includes the following components:

• Backpack . Gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos&files online. Cell phone reminders. http://www.backpackit.com/
• Basecamp is an online project management and collaboration suite. According to the website, “Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.” http://www.basecamphq.com/
• Campfire . Simple and easy web-based group chat. http://www.campfirenow.com/
• Highrise . This customer relationship management helps you to keep track of who you talk to, what was said, and what to do next. http://www.highrisehq.com/
• Ta-da List is the web's easiest to-do list tool. Make lists for yourself or share them with others. http://tadalist.com/ Also see (Remember the Milk at http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ ).
• Writeboard is a shareable, web-based text document that lets you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes. http://writeboard.com/

Google Docs ( http://docs.google.com ). Well known for its search engine, Google also provides a free suite of online collaboration and productivity tools. Google docs allows users to choose who can access your documents, invite others to either edit or view your document, spreadsheet or presentation, and even view a presentation together. Also, you can save your documents and spreadsheets to your own computer in DOC, XLS, CSV, ODS, ODT, PDF, RTF and HTML formats. And, Google docs allows easy publishing of documents online with one click, as normal-looking web pages, without having to learn anything new. You can publish to the entire world, just a few people or no one -- it's up to you. (You can also un-publish at any time.) Similarly, once you've created a document, you can post it to your blog. Following is a description of several of the many and various tools included in Google docs:

• Google Sites – One-stop sharing for all types of team information. http://sites.google.com/
• Google Docs – Create and share documents, create online surveys, spreadsheets and presentations. http://docs.google.com
• Google Mail or Gmail comes with helpful features to make e-mail more useful, like award-winning spam and virus filtering, up to 7 GB of storage per account, powerful search to find messages as fast as you can search the web, and instant messaging built right in. The Gmail web application is accessible from anywhere, and you can even sign in from your mobile phone. Or if you prefer, you can access e-mail from your favorite mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird using POP or IMAP at no additional cost. http://mail.google.com
• Google Calendar – Arrange meetings, set schedules, and publish event information. http://calendar.google.com (also see Sabella, 2008b).
• Google Talk – Instant message (video and audio) with co-workers and make PC-to-PC voice calls for free. http://www.google.com/talk/
• Start Page – Preview your calendar and docs, add gadgets and search the web from one place. http://www.google.com/ig