Web 2.0 Tools Reflection
As part of our Management Information System course, I was trained on 9 exciting web 2.0 tools and I got the chance to use all of them in my academic and personal life. The tools definitely enhanced my experience on the internet and through them I was able to work efficiently and save myself the time and effort spent otherwise to get a simple task done. In addition, I used other tools to document my experiences, read about other people's interests and experiences and simply stay connected with the world.
Below is my ranking of the tools in terms of usefulness from 1 (being the most useful) to 9 (the least useful tool).
Google Chrome: the first thing that came to my mind when I knew about Chrome is "where have you been all my life".. Google Chrome enhanced my web surfing experience 10 times more. I used to get frustrated with windows explorer because of how slow it was but with Chrome it was different. Google chrome also has endless features that are very interesting and useful to use such as the various applications, extensions and shortcuts that simply made my life easier. What I loved the most about Chrome is that fact that you can customize every single aspect of your browser, no other browser can beat that!
Diigo: Being a student, I have always struggled with my resources and wanted to have them all in one place that's easy to access. Diigo helped me with that! Diigo also eased up the process of sharing my resources with my project group members. The best thing about Diigo is that it's always there "on the right corner of my Chrome" where I can save graphs, paragraphs, PDF's on spot while I'm reading through the references.. With Diigo's full-fledged toolbar.. it doesn't get any simpler than this!
Tumblr: I love blogging and I have a long list of blogs on my bookmark. Tumblr is a simple and easy way to blog anything from text, video, audio, quotes, pictures and many more.. Being a person that loves sharing her experiences with people, Tumblr allowed me to do exactly that but on the web.
Google Docs: I found Google Docs to be very useful especially while doing group projects. My friend and I always get our work cross-checked by each other and using Google Docs, we were sharing our reports, spreadsheets and slides. In addition, using Google Docs, I created a survey for our Industry Project which was very simple and professional at the same time (way better than Survey Monkey)
Prezi: Prezi helped me in making dynamic presentations for both work and college. I used it for our Peer-teaching project and the girls loved it. Prezi is very user friendly since it has already nice templates, and all you have to do is input the content and you are ready to impress your audience!
Google Search: Using the advance features of Google Search helped me a lot on a personal and academic level. I'm constantly using the currency converter, the other unit measurement converter, time and weather, and Image search on a day-to-day basis. In addition, I'm using the different search techniques such as file type, +, *, 'define', book and map search. Google Search is an inevitable tool that I need to use everyday, and the training I had on it made me make use of the great searching techniques available on Google.
Google Site: The best thing about Google Site is that it doesn't involve any specialized knowledge of HTML. I liked the fact that Google Site made the idea of having your own website a matter of few clicks. I created a Google Site to discuss how I used the web 2.0 tools for my MIS course. One thing I didn't like about Google Site is that I wanted to customize the design of my site and there were a few restrictions. Other than that, It's a great tool if you are looking for easy ans simple website.
Google Calendar: Google Calender is a great social calendar with lots of interesting features, but I honestly prefer using outlook since all my friends and co-workers are using it and it would be difficult to make them all switch to Google Calendar.
Google Plus: I found Google Plus very interesting to learn about and experience but not to use as a main social network platform, because of the fact that it's not widely known and not all of my friends are using it (even though I sent them invites to my circle). In addition, being already part of so many different social networks, it's difficult to keep track of all my accounts, and therefore, I had very limited usage of Google Plus.
