Collaborative and Distance Communication Platforms and Tools

These platforms can be very useful for business professionals and students alike. A collaborative platform would be like Google Docs. Where there can be multiple people, working on the same project at the same time. Evernote is another example of this. My personal favorite is crocdocs because you can even edit and work on PDFs. The Wiki websites are probably the most known for collaborative work. Distance communication platforms are platforms where you can communicate with someone who is at a distance from you. Skype is the most known example of this. Facebook has adopted a facetime platform that gives the user the same access to distance communication as Skype.

On the Cool Tools for School website, they give a list of many collaborative platforms and list what each of these platforms does well.

According to Lucie Olejnikova in her article titled The Case for Collaborative Tools: Long-distance teamwork on a shoestring budget, she says that “the obvious advantage is the cost. Freely available communication tools can potentially save a lot of money, and the budgetary savings will grow exponentially during a period of time.” This means that it isn’t only cost effective to use these platforms, but it also saves time. Some key points that she makes are that when implementing these into our business or school practices, we need to remember “that choosing the right collaboration tool often depends on the type of collaboration required, the context for the collaboration, and the timing. They also point out that the collaboration
tool must either (a) improve an existing system or (b) implement a new system that is measurably better than the system it replaces.” After we finish this class and go out into the world, I hope we all remember how important these platforms can be.

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Collaborative+Tools

http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Publications/spectrum/Archives/Vol-13/pub_sp0812/pub-sp0812-pll.pdf