Reflection on Web 2.0 Tools

As a part of our MIS course, each student had to choose one of Google tools and train the class on it. After all the students finish their training sessions, each student should individually implement what she leant from these sessions by posing screenshots for each tool in order to show how she is using each tool.  In the end, we should rank those tools based on their usefulness to us, so here is my rank that reflects my opinion on what are the most and the least important tools.

1.   Blogs: I see the blog as the best tool because to me, it is a new way of sharing ideas and experiences. Also, it is easy to use blogs, customizing and personalizing the blog by using different gadgets and themes that reflect your taste is very enjoyable. By reading my colleagues posts, I was able to discover and see different side of their personalities, which is fantastic. The only thing that was difficult is to choose the topic that you are going to talk about.

2. Google Language Tools: I cannot live without this tool because I use it to do my college work, to translate texts related to movies, serials, new items descriptions and sometimes to deal with some other nationalities.

3. Gmail: I really really like this tool J not only because it is the topic that I trained my class on, but because I use emails too much and having Gmail account made many things easier to me. It is nice to have an email that organizes everything for you and you just come and fined what you want. Gmail stopped the spams nightmare and grant me the dream of having an access to all the documents saved in my home computer by using Gmail drive. Also, it is amazing to use your Gmail as a reminder and a note for your tasks.  I cannot enjoy the other tools provided by Google without my Gmail Account.

4. Picasa: It is one of my favorite tools; I use it to edit the pictures of my families and friends. Moreover, I use it to edit the pictures that will be included in my or my sister’s projects. Finally, prepare short videos for presentations and other personal. All of these things are done in a very easy way with a high quality result and that what’s makes me choose one of the first preferable tools.

5. Google Alerts: I love this tool because I do daily researches whether for the college or personal purposes and getting all the alerts about the topics that I want is much easier than keep searching. Also, most of the alerts match what I want, so of course I will like it.

6. Twitter: Twitter became one of my favorite tools because is very easy to be used and you get news in very short and fast way. I’m always checking my twitter account now and I get the tweets on my mobile phone. I enjoy reading daily jokes and tweets made by friends.

7. Google Reader: The reason behind me liking this tool is that it helps me in getting all the updates about the topic that I like, my friends’ posts and other websites that I’m interested in. What is good about this tool is that all the information and updates that interest you are collected in one place and  you don’t have to read them immediately you can came back whenever you are free and read them without rush. 

8. Google Searching: Searching techniques makes my search easier and faster. It is very beneficial for the projects search because now I know how to use Google Searching to find reliable sources. Also, I like the idea of searching by specific types of documents like PPT or Word. I used this tool a lot in doing my projects.

9. Google News: It is beneficial because I see it as the newspaper that is published to meet all my requirements and wants in terms of the layout the type of news and the type of publishers and receiving updates about the topic that I like.

10. Google Calendar: I don’t like to use electronic things to organize my time or appointment, but by syncing Google Calendar with my phone changed my mind, as I just have to open my phone calendar to check all my appointment, which is cool. Without Aisha Saif I think I would not be using this tool right now.

11. Google Blog Search: Own of the fabulous tools, it facilitate the search of blogs.  Now, I spend half of the time that I used to spend before in searching blogsJ. Usually I use it to search for topics that interests me like blogs posts about Korean and Japanese serials and movies. Using the advance searching makes the search much easier.

12. Google Chrome: From the first time I used the internet until Badryah’s training session, I only used one web browser which IE. But now, I transferred all my bookmarks to Google Chrome because it is easier, faster, has creative features like theme, backgrounds, panic button and games.

13. Facebook: Before, I didn’t think that I will ever use this tool. Most of my friends have a face book account and the kept telling me to join them and sending invitations in order to make me change my mind. However, I’m using at a lot know after attending the training session by Hessa. Actually, I have created new account other than what I used for this task. I use it to share information, videos and pictures. Also, I use it in finding my old friends and meeting new friends. I liked the idea of telling the others what your interests are, which gives you the chance to find and share them with people who also have similar interest. 

14. Google Docs: If we knew about this tool from last semester, it would be better. Most our work is in groups, so it is very helpful to use this tool in sharing and editing documents without the need to keep sending it by email every time you change something. It is very beneficial for me because I use it as a storage tool because I don’t use my laptop at home, so keep sending my document by email or saving it on USB is annoying and it puts my document in a risk as my USB might be lost or damaged or as usual the computer will ask me to format it. Moreover, I use it to check and modify my sister projects, who does not live with me.

15. Google Finance: Actually it is useful for me as an accounting student and it assist me in helping my brother who is taking some accounting and finance class now in doing his projects. I use it to check the financial statements of the companies and their news.  The ability to compare between two companies and see it in graphs for easier understanding is fabulous as I don’t have to spend time on preparing and then analyzing the graphs.

16. iGoogle: One of the tools that grant your web page some joy and refreshment as you can change the plain white background with something more lively. I keep changing the gadgets from time to time in order to not feel bored.

17. Google Earth: Maybe this tool is not that beneficial for me, as I don’t travel that much, but still I help my brothers to see the places they want to travel to. Also, when I hear about beautiful places or countries, I use Google Earth to see it. In my opinion, the most interesting thing about this tool is that I can see what is on the space other than the earth.

18. Social Bookmarking: I tried it because I know it is a very beneficial tool for me because of my problem with not liking to use laptops, but unfortunately I cannot trust these kinds of websites. However, I liked the idea of sharing links with colleagues and friends.

19. Google Groups: I did not like using this tool and I don't think that I'm going to use it in future, unless, I'm forced to.

20. Google Sites: I didn’t like this tool as it is slow and has a storage limit, which made me nervous all the time as I keep hearing the girls saying that they used more than 50% of the storage capacity even thought they didn’t finish half of the tools. Every time we delete a picture, we have to delete the same picture from the attachments in order to not reach the storage limit, which is very annoying.

     Actually, when I heard about this project I said “ it is not enough to be an accounting student and take an IT course, they want us to do all of these things”. However, I think it was the best way to make me love and keep using something that I don’t like. Usually, once I finish any IT course, I don’t implement, think or remember anything of what I learnt later. This is not what is going to happen this time because even now after finishing the course, I still use most of the tools. Although Mr.Tridib was little bet tough on us, he is the only reason that made us learn all of this stuff, which are new to us as accounting students. I think without his way in teaching, we would not be able to learn and benefit from this course, so thank you sir for giving us the opportunity to and see things from different prospective J.