What is Google Wave and Why Should You Care?
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What is Wave?
Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
Why Should I Care?
If you you are like many, the rapid unrelenting wave (yes, the pun is intended) of new technologies can be mind numbing, even exhausting. Who can keep up with it all? Should we even try?
No, we cannot keep up with all of it but yes, we should try to stay current. There are several reasons to stay on top of developments like Google Wave:
As leaders, we do not want to be caught with our pants down when a new technology explodes on the scene fundamentally changing the way we communicate and interact. IF it is a efficient and cost effective technology we need to know about it before investing limited resources in outdated technologies, irrelevant training, and misaligned infrastructure. - Some technologies have the potential to be game changers—they can change the expectations of parents and students and they can change the educational market, Distance Learning and the concomitant technologies is one example.
- Your credibility as a leader is affected by your “currency.” If you don’t know what’s going on today it is hard to convince others that you are equipping your students for tomorrow.
- Good technologies, effectively used, can increase your productivity.
- Google Wave may provide additional evidence that Email as we know it no longer rules. See my related article: “For Good or Bad: Email No Longer Rules".”
Here are three videos that explain Google Wave. Want to try Wave? You will need an invitation. Click here.