Online Meeting Tools
Tools such as Google Hangouts, Collaborate Ultra, and Zoom have seen increased usage during the COVID-19 pandemic as people are practicing social distancing. Some universities have moved all classes online for the time being and professors are using these tools in order to connect with students from their homes. I’ve been using Zoom to connect to live sessions for a few of my classes at ODU, this way we are still able to meet during our scheduled meeting times. Zoom allows for professors to share their screen in order to provide students with important information, as well as being able to address students with a microphone and webcam. Students are also able to chime in with their own microphones and webcams in order to ask questions and communicate with one another. I believe that these tools are very important in the digital age, as it makes it easy to communicate with our peers from anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection. Making use of these tools allows for us to help slow the spread of infectious diseases and continue learning from the comfort of our own homes.
Wikimedia?
I had no idea that there were so many open knowledge projects associated with Wikipedia. Wikimedia also hosts various other projects regarding references, collections, technology, guides, and collaboration including:
- Wikibooks
- Wiktionary
- Wikiquote
- Wikimedia Commons
- Wikisource
- Wikiversity
- Wikispecies
- Wikidata
- MediaWiki
- Wikivoyage
- Wikinews
- Meta-Wiki
I believe that many people will find these projects are full of useful information, and I can definitely see myself browsing through them in the future.