As part of my “playing in the sandbox”, I experimented with Google Wave. Although Wave is in its infancy—still a beta version being listed as a “preview” by Google, I was able to use this program to evaluate its potential and usefulness. The program is designed to be a collaboration tool, so users can collaborate and participate collectively on a project or have a discussion in real time.
I am certainly onboard with this concept—if I can avoid long strings of email forwards and replies then I’m all ears. However, in action, it was a little difficult to follow who was saying what—and this was with only three people in the wave. The screen appeared disorganized and I found myself almost getting dizzy trying to follow.
So my conclusion? Great concept, excellent potential, however more design work is needed to increase the user-friendliness and make this a tool which is truly beneficial in professional and educational applications.
If you’re interested in learning more about Google Wave, I’ve attached a couple of videos which provide more explanation and a demo.
ryanflood said,
March 15, 2010 at 5:34 am
Wow. I’ve seen the short “What is Google Wave?” video clip before, and was a little intrigued. Now, after watching the other video you’ve posted, I can see how powerful Wave really could be. The live translation feature (Rosy robot) looks very exciting. This could be a powerful tool for EAL teachers. I also like the Wave to Blog feature and its drag and drop capabilities. It does look like it could be rather overwhelming? What did you find made it seem disorganized and hard to follow? What is your favourite feature?
tanyaward said,
March 16, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Yes, I agree the translation feature (which we didn’t use) could be a great tool for EAL teachers–or if you wanted to do some sort of a collaboration project with a class overseas.
The drag and drop is a really nice feature–in our wave, Garnett dropped in some pictures and they appeared right away. Marnie tried a video and it wasn’t quite as accomodating. I’m not too sure what the problem was–I think it had something to do with software downloads.
Wave also has a “playback” feature which I should have mentioned in my post–it allows you to play back the entire wave so that would be helpful to remind yourself of all that ws discussed later on–or you could send it to someone else to get them up to speed.
I wish I had been able to save wha we had been doing–it is hard to describe exactly what I mean about the screen–I just found with even just 3 people posting the active wave window become cluttered and it was tough to follow the most recent post. tw