Archive for the ‘Google Apps’ Category

Maybe you’ve heard of Gmail, maybe you haven’t. Of course I have an edu email address at my college, but I only use it for “official college business” … communication with administrators and students.

For all other communications, including Listserves, newsletters, and personal communication, I use my Gmail account (which is also free). Why?

Reason #1: The most convincing reason can be seen in the image below. When someone asks a question or posts a topic on a Listserve, I see every response to the original message “stacked” in conversation-style. Rather than getting every email disjointedly separated from the others, new responses to the same topic always come collected with ALL other responses in this thread (including my own sent messages). This is done automatically for every conversation you have via email. I probably can’t convince you just how powerful this feature is, but now that I have it on my Gmail account, my school account drives me nuts.

Reason #2: GMail gives you over 5 GB of storage space. Just to give you an idea of how much space that is, I have a 1 GB thumb drive which holds all of my book files with room to spare.

Reason #3: 20MB attachments. Need to send a camtasia video to someone? Or send it to yourself to pick up at another location? You can’t do large file attachments like this in most email programs.

Reason #4: You can search Gmail with the same speed that you can search the Internet with Google. This eliminates the need for a complicated filing system for your emails. When I want to find an email from John, I just type “John” into my Gmail search and I instantly have ALL communication to and from John that exists anywhere in my Gmail including any emails that have John in the subject line or the text of the email. If I want to find an item from some emailed newsletter that was about audacity, I type “audacity” in the Gmail search and Gmail instantly finds all emails with audacity in the subject line, to line, from line, or text of the email.

Reason #5: Gmail actually effectively filters spam. Enough said.

Reason #6: You can have Gmail pick up all your other email and send responses from the other email address. I haven’t done this with my college email (yet) because we get so much spam at the college.

Reason #7: Did I mention Gmail is free?

UPDATE: After complaining to a friend about our school email this afternoon, I decided to take the plunge and have all my edu email sent to my gmail account because… you can set up the account so that when it receives email sent from an outside address, it replies from that address too. So even though I am using gmail, it will look like the replies and composed emails are sent from my edu address. Now I can only check one email and … bonus… it’s impossible to check our school email easily from a smart phone, but easy to check gmail.

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Google Bookmarks (on the Google Toolbar)

What is it? Before I started using the Google Bookmarks, I would bookmark a website in the browser on my home computer and then at school I would go to Favorites to find it … only to find it wasn’t there (or vice versa). How annoying is that? Well, if you have a google account, you can download the Google toolbar and then save your “favorites” to your Google account on the Internet instead of on the hard-drive of a specific computer. It’s the Blue star in the Google toolbar above. Now I can pull up my favorite websites anywhere! (at a conference, in a colleagues office, in a computer lab, on vacation,…) Cool! (read the update!)

Cost? Good news! Free!

Technical Requirements? You’ve got to get a Google account first. (Sign up for Gmail while you’re at it – it’s awesome!) You also need to download the Google toolbar on any computer that you want to access your bookmarks on (but that only takes about a minute) and log in to your account. (read the update!)

How could we use this technology in the hybrid or traditional classroom? I can pull up my cool math websites from any computer station that is hooked up to the Internet. I can save a website to my bookmarks from any computer that is hooked up to the Internet.

How could we use this technology in the online classroom? I can’t think of a direct use for online classes, but indirectly it will help you to manage your vast collection of Internet resources.

How could we use this technology in our professional lives?
I can save lots of time by not having to re-search for websites that I know exist but do not have bookmarked on the computer I’m using.

Wish list for this technology?
Google – please make the bookmarked list accessible without downloading the toolbar – just by logging in to the google account. (GRANTED!!! Read the update!)

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