Free Collaboration Tools Are An Investment That Can’t-Miss
K Sawyer once said: Collaboration drives creativity because innovation always emerges from a series of sparks … never a single flash of insight. Does your business spend the time to develop collaboration among employees? How about customers or clients? We are big believers in the power of these free collaboration tools.
Collaboration anywhere offers great possibilities for linkage and enrichment rarely obtained without it. Collaborative learning through widening linkage is among the most powerful and enduring methods of understanding.
We are all very busy: personally, professionally, and socially. One of our scarcest resources is time. Time to sit and think. To stretch our own limits. To learn new things. Time to imagine, create, explore, and experiment.
The years teach much which the days never knew.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
As Emerson said in the quote above, time can often be a teacher. Let it.
A very interesting quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, isn’t it? In your career, how many smart people have you been exposed to? I’ve had the good fortune of being exposed to many.
It never ceases to amaze me how just a few moments of discussion, or sitting and listening to well thought-out debates, can open your mind to ideas you can’t believe you didn’t think of on your own. And at the time, we probably didn’t think too much about it.
But over the years, ways to improve collaboration make a big difference.
Most of all, reach out to others to collaborate and to learn. The sum of team collaboration is always greater than the work of each individual.
We have always found the ability to learn from collaboration with others to be a fantastic gift: free of charge, limitless of value.
Limitless of value because the pearls of wisdom you can pick up can be connected to some of your ideas to produce something greater than what you might have created on your own.
I’ve been experimenting with a variety of online tools for collaborating in “real-time.” I’m interested in exploring their use for coordinating work with other businesses as well as clients.
I’ve used criteria to decide which ones to include here. They include:
* No software download is required.
* It’s free.
* No equipment is required other than, in some cases, a microphone. A webcam needs to be optional.
* Multiple users can collaborate at the same time.
* Simple to use.
I haven’t tried out many of these applications extensively. Therefore, I don’t feel I can rank them. I have categorized them into seven functional capabilities for your consideration.
Chatrooms
Neat Chat, Shinto, and Chatzy are easy ways to create private online chat rooms.
Free collaboration tools … whiteboards
Scriblink is an online whiteboard that can be used by up to five people at one time.
Twiddla is a whiteboard that allows text and audio chat for real-time collaboration. You can review websites within the application, and no registration is required.
RealtimeBoard is a new online whiteboard that seems like a decent tool for real-time collaboration. It’s easy to use and lets you upload images from your computer or by its URL address.
Whiteboard Genie is an online collaborative virtual whiteboard.
Stoodle is one of my favorite finds.
Like the best of the other sites, you can create these bulletin boards easily without registering and you can collaborate with others to create them.
Two features, though, that Stoodle has but, as far as I can tell, others do not, are:
* The ability to search and find images on the Web within the application itself. With the others, you have to find an image in another tab and then paste the URL address into the site. Stoodle gives you that option, too, but searching within the site makes it a lot easier.
* The chat feature between collaborators is text and audio. I don’t believe any other similar tool to the audio chat feature.
The only negatives that I see are:
* Using Stoodle the first time isn’t as intuitive as Padlet. It would be nice if they had a short video or just some screen shares identifying how to use the icons.
One can figure it out in a minute or two by playing with it, though. Just note that in order to move around the virtual “post-it” notes, you have to first click on one of the icons on the left.
An example of free collaboration tools.
Free collaboration tools … mind mapping
Mind42 is a “mind mapping” tool that has tremendous collaborative features.
I’m still having a hard time, though, figuring out more than one or two minor educational projects that students could create with it.
Useful presentations tools.
Presentations and documents
Here are online word-processing applications that allow multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously Zoho Writer.
Zoho Show and Google Presentations let you work with others on PowerPoint-like presentations in real-time.
Show Document couldn’t be much easier for uploading a document and then having multiple people — in real-time — editing it and using a chat board to communicate. No registration is necessary — just upload, get a code number, send it to others, and then you’re all working together.
QikPad is a similar nice online collaborative writing tool that has an embedding feature.
Slideshare, the popular online slideshow site, just added a new feature called Zipcast. With a simple click, it allows you to create a public or private video and text chat next to the SlideShare presentation you’re viewing.
Free collaboration tools … virtual meetings
Scribblar allows you to create a virtual “room” in seconds — without having to register — where you can collaborate for writing or drawing, with the ability to have a text chat board or audio/webcam communication. It couldn’t be easier to use.
Meetin.gs is a new site that lets you organize virtual meetings that also let your documents and media. It looks pretty simple and easy to use. It’s not open to the public yet, but I received an invitation very quickly after I requested it.
Any Meeting is an online meeting tool that also records the audio. Up to 200 people can participate.
Mighty Meeting is a free site that lets you create free online meetings where a slide presentation or documents can be shared. It seems to work quite simply, which is always a plus.
Screen sharing
Concept Board is very easy to use screen sharing tool. After registration, you can create up to twenty-five Concept Boards for free.
You click on “new Concept Board” and you have one — you can upload presentations, make comments, draw on it, etc. All you have to do is its URL address to others so they can gain access to it, too.
Join.me lets you your screen with up to 250 people and provides text chat (they seem to be having some technical troubles — at least during the last update I’ve made to this list).
Screenleap allows as many people as you like to see your computer screens at once without needing to set up an account.
Conference calls
Live Minutes is a new online conferencing app that is entirely browser-based and it doesn’t even appear you have to register in order to use it.
You’re immediately given a unique URL address for your conference that you with the people you want to connect with — and you can audio, a virtual whiteboard, documents, etc. You can’t video right now, but they say that feature is coming.
Meeingl is a super-easy tool for creating online conference calls. You can read more about it at Richard Byrne’s blog.
Reflap is a free tool for online video chats. You can have up to five people on the same chat.
What do you think of this list of collaboration tools? Do you have experience with any of them?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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