GAFE

Google+ and Google Hangouts

Today I'm going to investigate about two of the most important things that Google has. This year CNG is planning to change all of the technology to Google. Today I was given the task to search for Google+ and Google Hangouts. These apps will give us a hint on how will school look like next year.

Click Here to see a Google+ and Hangouts tutorial.

Google+ is a new social media site, just like Facebook or MySpace. It uses the same system, but it takes it closer to reality. As you know, in Facebook EVERYONE is your friend. Every single person you know, including your mom, sister or boss is on classified as "friend" on Facebook. Your boss can see embarrassing pictures that your friends upload and you have to untag yourself so that he or she doesn't see them. You have to censor your posts so that you don't give a bad impression to people. 

Well, Google+ isn't like that. You can have "circles" or groups of people you hang out with. Like in real life, you don't tell everything to everyone, you just tell it to certain people. You can make circles of friends, coworkers, family and more. You can add many people to your groups and you can have a person in two different groups. This can help for school because you can have your teachers on Google+ and not see their personal things because they can have you in "student circles" instead of friends. Also, teachers don't see your personal things because you have them in a different circle than your friends. You can make circles for projects and share things that you need for your project. Click Here to see an easy explanation of Google+. 

Google Hangouts is like this sort of Skype but much better. It comes with your Gmail account and includes video chat but with mure than just 2 people at a time. Here, you can video-chat with up to nine people at the same time. You can skype with one of your circles, and if they are offline and later get online, they can join a conversation, just like you would in real life. You can show a YouTube video with your buddies or even share your screen. You can also dress up like a pirate, a princess or even a dog. Click Here or Here to see more about Google Hangouts. 

I explored Google+ and its quite easy to use, and like it says on the first video, Google consumes you and you will eventually use Google for EVERYTHING. In a way it's kind of a pity because using other pages is fun than just using one page for everything you do. It makes multitasking present and it can make your brain become dumb. But in another way, it can make homework easier than what it is now. I think we shouldn't let technology completely take over, because then in the future we won't know how to write, which is much more important than typing. We can't let technology consume our brains, we have to keep being intelligent and not dumb robots. But that is just my opinion though.