Google Wave & Education, First Impressions Friday, May 29 12:09 PM

Two days ago, at the Google I/O 2009 Conference, Google introduced a new product: Google Wave. After watching the entire 1 hour and 20 minute video (with and while discussing it with @sherrymn), my first impression is going to sound hyperbolic. Over time my initial impression may prove to be exaggerated, but at the moment, I'm fairly comfortable saying that Wave may represent the next step in the evolution of online collaboration and communication, and the impact on and relevance to the education sector could or should be rather significant. I'll explain that in more depth by blogging over the next week about several different use cases for education that Sherry and I brainstormed and discussed as we watched the video.

For now, my abbreviated, big picture impressions follow; all of these, in my opinion, have serious implications for education:

• Widgets like Spelly, Linki, Searchi, and Rosi combined with the ability to drag and drop contents into online communication streamlines the composition process; the act of creating and contributing online appears much easier than current methods and transcends language barriers.
  
• The concurrent, real-time, multi-point, in-line communication - down to the individual character during document editing and messaging - has a different perceptual impact than current emails, document sharing and instant messaging tools. It's closer to a conversation than to a messaging system.
• The playback feature means that late comers can catch up and experience a conversation or collaborative process which has already taken place in a manner that allows them to pick up and participate moving forward.
• The openness of a platform of this magnitude being initially created and shared by such a large corproate entity, imho, is unprecedented. The extensibility of the platform combined with the ability for organizations to create and run internal Wave servers with connections to the outside world while maintaining institutional privacy makes it a powerful collaborative tool.
• Given current capabilities shown in the demo and a few extensions I believe are likely to be available rather quickly (i.e. Google Talk/Video Chat), Wave has the potential to provide more efficient means of communication and collaboration than *many* current tools: email, IM, wikis, collaborative documents, discussion groups, social networking, live blogging, and conferencing (audio/video/desktop).
  

The best thing to do is watch the 1 hour and 20 minute video. Yes. All of it. It was worth the time and effort I spent watching it, discussing and writing about it this morning.