The Collaborative Technology Tools enable users to create, edit, share and collaborate, adding another level of productivity in their daily activities.
CTT-Learn is a website for Information Technology professionals. CTT-L is part of a collaborative technology initiative between Texas A&M University and Information Technology leaders from more than 100 statewide member companies. The primary goal of this project is to create a shared understanding of Collaborative Technology Tools. This common language will facilitate a deeper understanding of the tools, their uses and more importantly, how they fit into the Information Technology development life cycle. By utilizing clear terminology, we will improve our ability to document our processes as well as foster more effective communications with customers and vendors. In addition, as individuals learn the new vocabulary that defines
Dig social bookmarks? You’ll love Diigo
Remember the old days when a librarian came carting books into your classroom for an upcoming report?
Imagine Diigo as a digital version of that librarian and the entire internet as her cart. Items in this cart, however, can be retained for as long as you like without the fear of overdue book fees. Diigo, which stands for ‘Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff,’ is a great social-bookmarking tool that helps students or classes capture relevant research articles on a given topic.
By offering mobile versions via Android and iOS and add-ons downloadable for Firefox and Chrome, Diigo can be accessed anywhere, anytime—perfect for lessons in the classroom and those that extend out into the field.
See also 12 Of The Best Bookmarking Tools For Teachers
How We Use Diigo
This tool has become a crucial part of our school’s approach to managing project-based learning resources. Since we are constantly on-the-move, a few books, let alone entire physical libraries, are impossible for us to reasonably transport. Diigo eliminates that concern, and helps our students curate and build an ever-growing library of bookmarks for our modules year after year.
Countries and specific place- and project-based modules have their own groups for students to contribute to and annotate resources. When a guest speaker visits, we can quickly create a research group to curate a list of resources so that our entire student body is informed and attentive before the speaker arrives.
Collectively annotate YouTube videos with VideoAnt
As a former history and anthropology teacher, I was thrilled to stumble across VideoAnt. In the past, my students would laugh at the number of times I would pause a video to ask a question or interject a counterpoint. Now, instead of just showing a YouTube video, you can annotate YouTube videos to maximize efficiency and learning.
Students and teachers can add comments to video ‘Ants,’ adding all sorts of untapped academic potential. Students can point out bias, critique video style, and ask probing and clarifying questions, just to name a few uses.
Also, if any coaches are reading this, this makes for an excellent review tool when analyzing practice drills, pre-game scouting, and game film breakdowns.
How We Use VideoAnt
In our Zero to Infinity module, students carved up an hour-long documentary about mathematics titled “The Story of One.” Educators annotate certain times with questions for reflection and short answers, while students annotate with different follow-up questions, and clarifying comments.
Due to our students’ geographic diversity, there can be large gaps in their understanding of mathematics. This tool helps educators gain more insight into the student math experience before starting the module.
Google Apps for Education
The Google Drive apps enable students and teachers to collaborate more effectively on papers, spreadsheets, and presentations. The beauty of the Google Suite for Education is: several people can contribute simultaneously, so it’s truly designed for collaboration. There is a limit of 50 simultaneous collaborators for Google Docs and Sheets, so there’s space for an entire class. There is a limit of 200 total viewers and editors in Google Docs and Sheets.
Another great feature of Google Apps is that they automatically save your work, so students’ work will never be lost. There’s also never a need to keep several iterations of a document because the revision history feature allows you to revert to previous versions of the document (to find revision history: go to the File menu and select “See revision history”).
FlipGrid:
FlipGrid is a video discussion community for your classroom that uses student voices to promote collaboration, discussion, and engagement. With FlipGrid, you can type a question and create a link for a “grid”. Students respond to the question in video format (kids get to be the “talking heads”) and are added to the “grid” of all the responses. FlipGrid is a great way to build the communicational skills of your students, while facilitating collaboration.
Google Hangouts:
Google Hangouts is a great way to bring remote groups of students together to communicate and collaborate. With Google Hangouts, inviting a guest speaker into the classroom has never been easier ….Google Hangouts enables anyone from around the world to “visit” a school. You can also use Hangouts on Air to record video, so you can record the day’s class and post a link to it on your class’ website for students that were absent. Google Hangouts is also a great vehicle for connecting and collaborating with other classrooms…within your own school or across the globe!
Microsoft 365
Share and edit documents, now with messaging
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Familiar software+Collaborative editing+Teams provides UC+Cost-effective bundling
Microsoft Office may not be the first platform you think of when it comes to collaboration, but this now runs at the heart of the Microsoft 365 cloud-based office suite.
This is important because Microsoft Office remains the most used and therefore important office suite out there, and while there are competitors such as OpenOffice and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) they still haven’t caught up to the same level of functionality and ease of use.
Therefore as Microsoft Office is likely to be at the heart of many businesses, the move to Microsoft 365 offers a number of advantages, not least the ability for teams to collaborate directly on the same set of documents. This could be anything from work shifts in an Excel spreadsheet, to a presentation in PowerPoint, to client reports written in Word.
Added to this is that Microsoft Teams now comes bundled with a number of Microsoft 365 packages, allowing for Unified Communications integrated with the traditional office software.
What makes Microsoft 365 more attractive is that as a cloud-hosted platform it can be used not just with Windows, but also Mac, Android, and iOS.
Pricing depends on whether you are buying for personal or business use, with fees starting from $6.99 or $8.25 a month per use, with business use requiring pre-paid annual plans.
However, one little advertised alternative option is Microsoft 365 Business Basics, which offers most of the same software packages and options as above, but only comes in at $5 per month per user when paid annually. This makes the entire package extremely cost-effective, especially when compared to standalone UC and collaboration software prices.
Overall, Microsoft 365 doesn’t simply offer a great office suite, but one that is also firmly designed for collaboration and sharing with teams.
Podio
A mobile-friendly collaboration tool
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REASONS TO BUY
+Easy-to-use interface+Quality mobile apps+Wide range of integrations
Podio describes itself as a flexible and customizable online platform for work and communication among teams. In other words, it gives you a way to organize large stacks of work and to delegate tasks between employees.
Just like many of the other business collaboration apps out there, Podio provides you with the tools to share files, view the status of ongoing projects and get feedback on the things you’re currently working on. These functionalities are combined into an easy-to-use interface.
Podio is also equipped with quality mobile apps for when you’re out and about, and need to use your smartphone or tablet, and it has an impressive amount of integration with third-party services and apps including Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and Zendesk.
Nectar
Nectar is an award-winning employee recognition & rewards platform that bolsters online collaboration. It creates a simple, standardized way for organizations to give out recognition, spot bonuses, awards and wellness challenges all within budget. This includes peer to peer recognition as well as manager to direct reports.
With Nectar, you can reinforce great work anytime, anywhere through an interactive recognition feed. Keep morale up, teams connected and promote your company’s core values in an online working environment.
Pros
- Connects with your other tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams and more to make recognition as seamless as possible
- Has a robust rewards engine with hundreds of global gift card options or branded company swag
- Unlike others in this space, Nectar aligns with its customers through Fair Billing. You only pay for ACTIVE users instead of per employee per month. They also don’t do contracts or implementation fees.
- Has a free tier along with paid plans
Explore pricing and features to find the Nectar plan that best fits your team.
Cons
- Wish there was more functionality on the free tier
- Reward options are limited outside of the US, UK or Australia
Teamwork
Teamwork was built so you can manage ALL your client work in one platform. From invoicing, to time tracking, to unlimited client access, everything you need to run your client services is in Teamwork.
Teamwork gives you the tools and reports you need to maximize resources and never miss a billable minute again. Get a bird’s eye view of every project, from milestones to capacity planning, budgeting and time tracking and more.
Break work and projects into tasks and layers of subtasks – so nothing slips through the cracks and everyone knows what to do and when it’s done.
Pros
- Signup for a free 30-day trial of Teamwork with no commitments
- Teamwork has the growth-focused features like time tracking, custom client permissions, assigning tasks to multiple people and more
- A user-friendly learning curve and the essential features (like reports and resource management)
- Teamwork has the collaboration, client features and robust flexibility necessary for managing multiple complex projects
- Solid functionality so your team can manage large, complex projects without the learning curve and limitations
- Collaborate in real-time with your team and clients to get your questions answered and projects delivered on time & on budget.
Cons
- UX can be a bit cumbersome, but they are currently working on an overhaul
Conclusion
The tools are what you might consider the smarts of the digital workplace. Application sharing, document editing, social tagging, real-time communication via chat or videoconference, enterprise search to find any piece of information instantly—all these tools are built into the software platform you use every day at work. They give you the ability to collaborate across departments or with business partners around the world. You will be able to design and put together presentations using art, video, photography, slide decks and other documents all at once. And rather than wait for files to move back and forth, you can instantaneously share what you’re working