Tools for group work and presentations

Collaborative tools

Google Drive

One of the most frequently used web-based alternatives to MS Office is Google Drive. Google Drive was launched in 2012 and is now the home of Google Docs. Through Google Drive you get the functionality of Google Docs, but with added storage possibilities.

Google Drive/Docs offers the following functionality:

• Document (equivalent of Word)
• Presentation (equivalent of PowerPoint)
• Spreadsheets (equivalent of Excel)
• Forms (create questionnaires and surveys that can be answered online)
• Drawings (drawing program for creating figures and flow charts) 

Google Drive's greatest strength is that it offers users the possibility of collaborating on a document or presentation online. You can give collaborators permission to work on your document/presentation and then choose whether they have read-only access to the document, or whether they can alter the document (you can even choose to give others comment privileges only). Then just get started working on the shared document and watch as your collaborators make changes and additions in real time. There’s even an integrated chat function to further facilitate cooperation.

Another strength of Google Drive is that you can also view a document’s revision history. This makes it easy to see how the text has developed over time, who made what changes at what date and time, etc. It’s also possible to easily return to a previous version of the document.

Watch this video of Google Docs in plain English for a good overview of the service:

Communications tools

Skype

Skype is a well-known service for making video calls (it also offers a classic text chat and an IP telephone service). You can download the free version of Skype to your computer and start making video calls to one person at a time.

Google+ Hangouts

As part of Google’s social network Google+ you can now make free video calls to several people at the same time as part of the Google+ Hangouts service. The following film offers more information about the service:

Presentation tools

Prezi

Are you tired of PowerPoint and similar presentation tools? If so, Flash-based Prezi could be a fun alternative. Rather than working with classic “slides” like in PowerPoint, Prezi essentially provides you with a huge bulletin board/mind-map where you can roam freely and zoom in and out. Because everything is created and saved online, you only have access to your presentations when you have access to the Internet. But is possible to download a finished prezi and save it to your hard disk or a USB stick (although this functionality is still having some growing pains).

Watch this video to get a better idea of how Prezi works:

Screenr

A web service you can use for presenting material online as a screencast. Screencasting is when you record a film of everything that happen on your computer screen, with or without an accompanying audio track. It’s basically a living screenshot. You can use Screenr and similar services to create demonstrations of a particular website, or record your voice as you show a PowerPoint presentation in slideshow mode. There are plenty of free screencasting tools out there, but Screenr is a good, simple one and well worth trying.

Youtube

YouTube is a website where users can upload videos they’ve created and view clips that others have uploaded. It is one of the most heavily-trafficked sites on the net.  You can upload films, tag them, and gather a collection a favourite video or playlists. YouTube also offers web-based editing feature that makes it easier to edit films and combine film clips.

YouTube has also built a portal specifically designed for films produced by various universities. The portal, called YouTube EDU, contains thousands of lectures and other materials that these schools have chosen to share with the rest of the world.

The textual content of SLU Library’s Search- and writer´s guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license