Web Tools for Study Groups
This is a short guide to some web tools for forming study groups with your fellow students. Or for just socialising with someone who knows what you're going through ;-)
Facebook is a social networking site first used by US college students to stay in touch but also to collaborate and study.
It has tools such as groups which can contain forums which are easy to set up. Facebook has detailed privacy settings which you should make yourself aware of.
Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a popular social bookmarking tool. It adds a button to your browser that lets you save webpages for viewing and sharing with others. You can create a network with other people to share bookmarks between you. A useful aspect of Del.icio.us is its support for tagging. Your bookmarks are organized by tags making it easy to research or discuss specific topics.
Skype & Chat
Skype is useful for making voice calls and video calls (with a webcam) from your computer. Computer to computer calls are free. Skype also has chat features and allows sharing of big files. Skype even allows you to have conference calls.
Similar tools include Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk , MSN Messenger and open source Jabber . Chat integration tools such as Meebo are useful for talking to friends who use different chat services.
Google Calendar & Google Documents
Google calendar is useful for organizing meet-ups or calls allowing people to share dates when they are busy or potentially free. After a calendar is created it is saved on the web and can be accessed from anywhere including mobiles. Calendar is useful for setting automatic email or text message reminders about upcoming events or tasks.
Google documents (Google Docs) allows people to share word documents or spreadsheets and access them from the web. An interesting feature of Google documents is that they show the revision history of a document. This means that you can see who has contributed what and when and gives a snapshot of how the document has evolved. Revision history is the main feature of wikis - a similar form of collaborative web-based document. Services that allow you quickly set up wiki's include PBWiki and WikiSpaces
Blogs and Micro-Blogs
Blogs are easily updated websites which make use of tags and links to connect communities of people. A popular free blogging service is Blogger. Blogs may not be particularly useful for collaborative study and student networking, though an interesting recent offshoot might be: Micro-Blogs .
One micro-blogging tool that is rapidly growing is Twitter. People can update twitter with short text messages known as tweets from IM, SMS, Email and the web. Twitter is a bit like IM but allows more people to participate simultaneously, and is web-based. Jaiku is similar to twitter, allowing people exchange short messages over the web. Jaiku's support for channels makes it a more serious collaborative tool. Jaiku is for business, Twitter is for fun.
Further Links & Resources
- Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students - A big list of online learning tools
- Mashable.com - Social Networking news site
- The Machine is Using Us - Famous video explaining some ideas behind Web 2.0
- RSS - A tool for keeping track of websites you read (e.g. Blogs, News etc.)
- Netvibes - A Popular RSS reader
