Learning in a digital world

Google+ is a social network like Facebook and twitter.

To get started you need a Google account. Click here to get a Google account. If you have Gmail you already have an account.

Note: you are not advised to use the Gmail account given to by the school. First, if may not have enabled Google+ yet, and secondly, when you leave school to go elsewhere you will no longer have the account. Therefore, create a Google account or a personal Gmail account.

Sign in to your Google account or to your Gmail. When you do, you will get a black menu at the top of your screen like this:

Click the leftmost menu option (mine is +Jan) and you are in Google+.

In Google+ you can write posts or read what others have written. Here is a video that gives you an introduction.

And here is more of a tutorial:

Google+ is about five months old and new features and improvements are added all the time. Here is a list of 100 improvements made since the start.

When you start Google+ you have to add people to follow. Obviously you want to follow people who writes stuff you find of interest. Here are some ways to find interesting people.

1. Search by topic and add to your circles (i.e. follow) those who write or comment about the topic.
2. Ask someone who shares your interests to share one or more of their circles. That is a fast way to follow let’s say 250 math educators.
3. Check if the bloggers you follow also write on Google+. If they do, add them one of your circles.
4. Look at who someone you like follows (it is in their profile page), or who follows them. If you find their posts interesting follow them.
5. Search by name.

Famous people use Google+. Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu is one example. Here is his talk with his friend Dalai Lama.

What you get out of Google+ depends on two things: who you follow and who follows you, or, to put it differently who you read and who reads you.

Many use Google+ as an advertisement for their blog. This morning I found this interesting post which led to this blog. I am not an art teacher, but the idea explained can be used in various ways in a school.

This was just scratching the surface of Google+. Please use the comment section for questions and queries.

By the way, my Google+ posts are here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at 02:48 and is filed under Social network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.