Archive for category collaboration

“8 Things You Need to Know About Collaboration”- Dale Arseneault

Reflections on Knowledge Management and Organizational Innovation: 8 Things You Need to Know About Collaboration:

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1. Collaboration is over used and mis-used and is becoming a buzzword for business people and technologists alike

2. Collaboration isn’t the same as cooperation or coordination – each have different processes, practices and depth of engagement

3. Collaboration is a human process – throwing technology at people won’t magically/automatically create collaboration

4. Meaningful, productive collaboration won’t happen without mutuality of desired outcomes, shared values of transparency and information sharing, compassion, compromise

5. Collaboration implies that ‘the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few or the needs of the one’ and sometimes people aren’t really interested in living by that principle

6. Collaboration isn’t always the best process

7. Collaboration is not equal to Web 2.0

8. Collaboration can be a source of real value in the face of complex environments and situations where no single person has the right answer”

(Via Reflections on Knowledge Management and Organizational Innovation)

Spot on!

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Yahoo! Teachers Beta: Invites

Yahoo! for Teachers - Portfolio for Michael Circe.jpg

Just received this email from Derek Baird from the Yahoo! Teachers team and I wanted to pass it along to my readers.

Hello Everyone!

We’ve been working hard integrating all your great “sugs” (and fixing bugs) from our summer workshops and getting Yahoo! For Teachers Beta ready to launch.

We are looking for more teachers to join our beta program. If you know an educator who is interested in joining us, have them shoot an email to: yteachersinvite@yahoo.com Feel free to share this information in a newsletter or in a blog post.

If you have any questions, or need help with Yahoo! For Teachers, please don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thanks!

Derek

If you have any questions about the program feel free to comment!

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Zoho Writer using Google Gears!

This morning Zoho announced that their writer service will start providing users the ability to access their online writer files offline! I have used Google Gears for viewing my Google Reader feeds offline, and I am very excited about Zoho moving towards using Google Gears with the rest of their applications.

“We are taking our first steps towards offering Zoho Writer offline. With this update, you’ll now be able to access all your documents offline (Mac or PC) in read-only mode. We will offer offline editing capabilities in the coming weeks.”- Zoho Blog

The ironic part of this story is how Zoho, a competitor/threat to the Google Documents service, is using Google open source technology to power their newest feature. I am pleased by Zoho’s recognition of Google’s efforts towards providing offline content. The question is now, how long till Google uses Google Gears with their Documents service?

Since the video is so tiny, you can view the screencast here.

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Yahoo! for Teachers

Early in July I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to New York City to take part in a Yahoo! for Teachers workshop where they introduced us to the soon to be released Yahoo! for Teachers website. Collected with me were educators from throughout the tri-state area looking to learn more about the new service Yahoo! is creating. I must say that I was extremely impressed with the Yahoo! teachers site. As mentioned, on the launch announcement website, this service is a “peer network designed by and for teachers.” The ability to develop lessons and units using their well thought out tools is simply fantastic. I look forward to sharing what I can with my fellow teachers this fall and hopefully with Yahoo’s permission incorporate them into the testing phase. I will add more insight later on about the tools (Project building, “Gobbler”, Peer-State/Grade Level sharing), and since everything is still in development and private testing I will leave you to be filled with suspense! Here is an informational video about Yahoo! for Teachers!

Bill Scott wrote a nice blog entry “Yahoo! Teachers and the Yahoo! Gobbler” that includes some photos as well as a video of the site in action.

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Excellent Resource Wiki

Only a few minutes ago I posted a Youtube video uploaded by Dean Shareski. He has created a wonderful resource wiki for educators which explains a lot of the tools on the net that can be utilized for collaboration, professional development, and even implementation in the classroom. Here is the link!

http://shareski.wikispaces.com/

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