As we have thought about the integration and roll out of technology across Tabor, one of the things that some of the staff and I have been grappling with is the question of what tools to leverage going forward.

One of the tools for consideration is Google+ (as we use Apps for the college). The question that naturally follows proposing to use such a tool is: what can this facilitate?

This qustion has has me thinking for a while and we’re begun thinking about the various conversations that generally take place around the college as an analogy that addresses this question.

For example, in a physical classroom a student can raise their hand and ask the teacher a question - a public student-teached conversation. Likewise, that student could at the end of the class approach the teacher and ask a more in-depth question as a follow-up: private student-teacher conversation.

A student could ask a question of the class both in-class and out of class. These are semi-public or group-private conversations. A student could ask another class member a question in the cafe after class, or quietly lean over and ask them during class - private student-student conversations.

We then extend the range a little and we can have a student have a conversation to a member of a different class (student-student), but wouldn’t be able to ask another class or it’s teacher a direct question.

Expand out further we could have student-public or teacher-public conversations.

All of these options appear to be quite straight-forward to implement in Google+ as we can create accounts and groups that mimic the sets of “college” and “class” quite easily. For all of the “private” conversations, users are able to initiate and maintain these at their discetion.