Gmail

Are you feedback with fighting with your email software? I was and tired of checking multiple accounts and deleting spam. I was especially frustrated with the email server managers emailing me warnings that my inbox is getting full and that I need to remove message. I hate doing that when I don’t have time to carefully consider that I need to keep. Actually, I just hate deleting anything because I just know I will need it late. Not that I can find old important messages in my email anyway.

Okay, then a friend invited me to try Gmail or Google Mail and it is by fair the BEST email tool on this planet. And if you ask other Gmail users, they will say the same thing. And it is free. Why do I like it?

• I moved all of my other email accounts (save my mtroyal.ca) to it very easily and now I just need to check in one place.
• It is webbased so I can access it anywhere.
• I have almost 3 Giga Bytes of storage so no one bugs me to clean up my inbox. I have been using it for 6 months and I am still under 10% used.
• I can attach files to a message to myself and use it as web storage. Max file size per message is 10 MB.
• I can use the Google Search engine to fine the email messages I need.
• It automatically add any email address I send to or recieve from into the contacts list.
• It clusters messages into conversations.
• It supports labels instead of folders. Messages can essentially be in more than one folder/label at a time.
• It has a star flagging tool for flagging messages that require my attending. I can quickly list all messages starred.
• It has great spam controls.
• Gmail is also integrated with Google Talk an easy to use Instant Messaging tool that stores your transcripts into your Gmail box.
• It has a great spell checker and rich formatting tool that appears just like Word.
• It is fast and reliable. It saves to draft automatically so you don’t lose your message with a network disruption.
• It is just way too easy to use and it is free.

I highly recommend this as a replacement email system to teachers and students. To get signed up you need to have a current gmail user invite but that is not difficult, just look for a message in your inbox from a gmail.com email address and ask them to invite you.

Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding

Here is a very interest short film about teaching and understanding. It is in the context of Universitys but can be applied to most other learning contexts. This film is being shared freely on the Internet and can be accessed at http://www.daimi.au.dk/~brabrand/short-film/

I think the message in the presentation is great and well presented. We talk a lot about these ideas with instructors but this film really illustrates what we need to do to help students learn more effectively. Please post your comments on how you found the film.

Audacity

Audacity is a very good sound recording and editing application that is open source and free. It is available for Macs, Windows, Linux and other OS from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Audacity is easy to use to record presentations, interviews, sounds or music. You can see a visual representation of the sampling and edit the sound kind of like a word processor, you can select a segment, delete, copy or move it. You can also record or mix several tracks and save to MP3 format for podcasting.

I have used Audacity for recording guest speakers, myself and presentations over the Internet that I was not able to attend. There are many advanced features but they are optional. The one I have found very handy is the Noise Removal effect that can clean up the buzz.

Both teachers and students will find this tool handy.

If you are interested in acquiring music for presentations, you may want to check out Finale Notepad. With this free program you can select and download from thousands of legal music pieces and record them to Audacity and put them into presentations, legally.

Wetpaint.com

In looking for a useful free and hosted wiki tool, I have come across Wetpaint.com. It have a very easy interface and claims to have the functions of a wiki, blog and online discussion forum. You can access it at www.wetpaint.com.

Features that I like are:

• Many templates to choose from
• Comments and discussions are right on the page
• Very easy to work with
• You can attach files to pages
• You can add RSS Feeds directly in the pages

There are many of these out there but I am looking for the best one. If you know of others that work for you, please comments and share it.
Like all wikis, you use this for many collaboration activities. What activities do you use Wikis for?

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Google a fairly new tool available that allows you to create, open, print, share and collaborative edit word processor documents and spreadsheets. The word processor tool appears to be a cross between MS Word and a Wiki. Actually it is the Writely tool that Google acquired not too long ago. The spreadsheet tool appears like MS Excel. Both allow you to do the following:

• Open documents and save them as PDF files.
• Store documents online and access them from anywhere. No storage limit apparently.
• Collaborative create documents like meeting agendas, lists and tables.
• Draws email address from my gmail contact list.

Although you just need email addresses of the people you want to share or collaborate with, they will need a Google account, which is free.

You can access this tool at http://docs.google.com/

I have also run across a couple of similar tools at http://www.thinkfree.com/and http://www.zoho.com/that are also free and have more tools, like presentation, planner and database tools.

Are tools like this going to be a threat to the MS Office Monopoly?