Google Sites is a structured wiki- and Web page-creation tool offered by Google as part of the Google Apps suite. The goal of Google Sites is for anyone to be able to create a team-oriented site where multiple people can collaborate and share files. Google Apps can be very useful for project management to collaborate between team members or to publicly display the progress of a project.
Design & Visualization
Design software focuses on the digital creation or re-creation of a thing or idea. Types of design range from print media, web site, computational, 3-dimensional, structural, simulation, and more. Simulation and modeling software is closely related and sometimes integrated with design software.
Visualization software includes applications that help visualize concepts, ideas, or scenarios. This includes diagramming, geographical visualization, molecular and structure visualization, graphical data representations, and some animation.
Also included in this category are applications used in presentations. This includes not only Powerpoint and powerpoint style presentations, but live polling software, presentation capture software, and web presentations as well. As well, applications used to create, edit, convert, or touch up digital images. Software ranges from photo editing, photo cataloging, graphic design, and diagramming. Finally there are applications used to edit web pages including code editors, What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editors, and Content Management (CMS) systems that organize and manage web pages on a server.
Google Slides
Categories: Design & Visualization
Availability: Faculty/StaffPart of: Google Apps
Comparable: Keynote, OpenOffice, Powerpoint, Prezi, Sway
Google Slides is a basic cloud-based presentation tool that can be accessed directly through any web browser. Presentations are automatically saved to Google’s servers (Google Drive), and a revision history is automatically kept so past edits may be viewed (although this only works for adjacent revisions, and there is currently no way to find and isolate changes in long documents). Presentations can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes.
Slides also gives users the ability to share the document. Typically when a normal document is shared the recipient accesses a copy from one point in time. With a Google Slide the document is shared in real-time, so recipients can always access the most recent version of the document. Sheet owners can also grant permissions for the recipient to comment on the document, edit, or revision. This introduces real-time collaboration, where multiple users can be editing the same document simultaneously, see each others’ edits, and even chat with each other in a sidebar. There are many other powerful features in Google Slides.
Haiku Deck
Categories: Design & Visualization
Availability: Free on web or iPad/iPhone AppComparable: Google Slides, Prezi, Powerpoint, Sway, Keynote
Haiku Deck is a web or mobile app based presentation platform that focuses on simplistic imagery and text to compliment the speaker’s narration. The Haiku Deck philosophy is to make simplistic, beautiful, and fun presentations that highlight the speaker’s points without splitting the audience’s attention. It contains an open license graphics library that is both visually stunning and versatile. Users can choose between pre-created themes, decks, and slides or create their own using the gallery and editor. The idea is to prevent presenters from loading a slide down with information that can be delivered in a more engaging way orally. This presentation style is commonly used in TED Talks. Haiku Deck is a free iPad/iPhone app or web-based application with limited storage.