Journal #6: All About Google+

GOOGLE+ : THE COMPLETE GUIDE

Parr, B. (2011, July 16). Google+: The complete guide. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/07/16/google-plus-guide/

Summary: This article goes in depth about the aspects of Google+ and exactly how it functions as a social network for Google, including its main features. This article uses commentaries, videos and photos to demonstrate the features of Google+. In general, Google+ is an online social network that will include a newsfeed, a recommendation engine, a video chat service, a group texting service, a friend management service, and photos; the makers are still in the process of producing more features, like games. My personal favorite thing about Google+ is that you can make separate "circles" of friends that you can communicate a certain way with; sometimes, not everything you post may be relevant to everyone on your friends list. The features listed in this article include Google+ Profile, circles (categorizing group of friends), streaming and sharing content (as in status), filter option to see different categories of streams, hangouts (audial/visual chat window with a maximum of 10 people at a time), Photos, Mobile (app that allows you to access your Google+ account), Privacy that is being given extra attention to, and Google+ for businesses (create business profiles). Facebook has been a very strong social network for so many years. People have developed a strong attachment to this social network already; I am not certain Google+ will be able to beat Facebook because facebook is very simple to use, and it seems to provide everything that Google+ provides except for the facetime, which gmail, Skype, AIM, and iChat already offer. Also, as the article claims, Google+ is still an ongoing project because it still has a lot of bugs that need to be fixed. I would like to rest assure that the social network site that I am using has full proof privacy and security.

Question: How effective and beneficial do you believe Google+ will be, as a social network, in communicating and sharing with other educators?


With Facebook in the picture, I am not too sure how effective of a social networking tool it would be. Also, with the number of bugs that are not fixed yet, I would not feel too safe sharing and recieving educational resources with other teachers around the world. I do not believe it would be very effective as of yet; it will not be ready to use until it is free from bugs.

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EDUCATORS - GOOGLE PLUS IS FOR YOU

Brogan, C. (2011, Sept 30). Educators – Google Plus is for you. Retrieved from http://www.chrisbrogan.com/gpluseducators/

Summary: This article discusses the usefulness of Google+, for an educator, as a collaboration tool that can be helpful to the classroom. For instance, the Stream feature allows educators to share lesson plans with the teachers in their Circle. Educators may have discussions, post videos, photos, and links. The Hangout feature allows educators to share and collaborate classroom-related ideas and information. I believe that there is a potential for Google+ to be a useful tool in collaborating lesson plans and classroom ideas and material. I also believe that the Circle feature is a great way to categorize the educators that you want to share and receive material with. However, this article also leaves out the fact that Google+ is not yet complete, and that it does contain many flaws as of yet. We cannot be sure that Google+ will keep all of the information that is shared, secure. Twitter is and has been a great way for educators to share information with each other, while keeping the professional level stable because there is not much that can be said in a character-limited status update box. Google+ may not be the most helpful, because people may be tempted to update a lot of overwhelming, useless information that only takes up too much space of a Stream.

Question: If Google+ was just as secure as the other popular social networking sites, would educators begin to use Google+ as their main source of education-collaboration?


It is difficult to say, because as I said before, Facebook is already a huge social networking website that people are feeling comfortable with, because it offers many things that people want and need in a social networking site. However, Xanga and Myspace were also, at one point, very popular and people have moved on at gradual paces onto the newest social networking site, so I have hope in Google+. Also, Google+ would have many more features to offer than Facebook once safe, so it would be a great tool for collaborating with other educators.