In an attempt to bring social networking into the office, “Conversations” is a new technology that provides a message board style interface for groups of people to communicate and collaborate. This technology would seem to have direct application to educational settings where all of the students and instructors in a classroom could get together with real time communications rather than discussion board style “email” messages. This would be like a real time classroom café. URL: https://hootsuite.com/features/conversations

 

Another interesting technology with potential for educational settings is “OpenID.” It is an open authentication protocol that allows a single set of login credentials work at each site visited. Once you’ve been authenticated, there is another app called “OAuth” which will automatically fill in all the personal information that each new site visited. One of the obstacles to using various websites is trying to remember login information for each site, and filling out the same tedious profile information over and over again. These two apps automatically do it for me. Without a simpler way to sign on, I tend to forget the login information, get frustrated with searches for login and passwords, and quit visiting the site. Less time spent trying to access a site and enter redundant information leaves more time for learning. This technology claims to be a safer, faster, and easier way to log into web sites. URL: http://openid.net/