Google+ Communities Tutorial

This tutorial is an introduction
to Google Plus Communities.

In order to access Google Plus Communities
you need to be a Google Plus user.

So you are going to first need to
activate your Google Plus account.

You can do that from you inbox,
your gmail inbox, or you can go to

plus.google.com to get started
with Google Plus.

Google Plus Communities
are shared spaces on line

where folks can come together
to share ideas, to share resources,

and to collaborate with each other.

Here are just a few of the ways
people are using Google Communities.

I use Google Communities
for a couple of the courses that I teach.

Its gives us a shared space online
where we can post comments and ideas,

share resources, ask questions.

If you are using it with students,
they need to be over, 13 or older.

You can also use it with other
professionals that you work with.

With your colleagues or
connecting with parents,

or folks who have similar interests.

So these are just a few of the
communities that I am a member of.

Some of these communities
I moderate

which means that I sort of
set the structure for that community

and some of these I created
and some of these I joined

that others created that were
interesting to me.

And you can see that communities
range greatly in the amount of members

that they have.

You may be looking for a community
that has a lot of members

and a lot of activity happening
or you may be looking for

a smaller close nit community
with just a smaller group of people

sharing resources for a specific purpose.

Communities can be private or public.

As you can see here there is a community
for a course that I teach

that is a private community.

Only folks who I invite
can be part of that community.

These other communities are public
and open to anyone.

Here is just a small sampling
of communities that are available

in Google Plus. There are lots and lots
of communities already out there.

You can see alot of these have quite
a few members.

So you can browse and find communities
that are already existing

where people are already active
and having conversations with each other,

sharing great ideas and resources, and
you can join those existing communities.

Or you can create your own if there is
a specific purpose that you want

to collaborate with other folks about.

Here are some things that
Google Communities can do for you.

You can get answers to your questions
and get feedback on your ideas.

This is one of my favorite things about
Google Communities.

If I'm pondering a new idea,
or just doing some brainstorming,

or would like some advice,

Google Communities is typically the
place I go for that.

So I can just post a question.
I can put it into a specific community

which is what I've done here.

I created a community for
teacher educators.

I can post a question in there
and you can see that I got 7 comments

that were on this one question.

People giving me advice and resources
and suggestions.

So the purpose of a community,
of posting ideas in a community,

is that people are there in this
community space on purpose.

So membership in a community
is mutual.

People choose to join
for a specific reason.

They want to engage in conversations
with other people.

They have an interest in whatever
the community is focused on

and they are there on purpose.

Now, not every member of a
community is an active member

and you know is regularly participating
but lots of people are there on purpose

and they are there because
they want to participate.

So the odds are pretty good
that if you are a member of an active

community and you post an idea
or question

you are going to get some feedback
from the community.

Which I just think is really valuable.

You can also find some great resources,
connect with people who are like-minded,

and if you are a twitter user Google Plus
can have some real advantages to you

in that you can have lengthier
conversations than you can through twitter

so I'm actually going to go into
Google Communities now

and show you how to navigate.
Show you how to find communities

and how to join them
and how to create your own.

So here is my Google Plus page.
If I hover over the home button

here in the top left corner,
I can find my option for communities.

Now these are communities
that I moderate

so these are either communities
I created,

or communities that I am a member of
but also a moderator for.

These are communities that other folks
created but I joined

because they are about something
that I am interested in.

Now if I scroll down here to the
section on discover communties

I'll find other communities
that Google is recommending for me

based on my profile
that I've set up previously,

based on things that I post about,
and based on my existing communities,

these are some recommendations for me.

So I may want to just pop into some
of these and see what is happening there.

You want to pay attention
to how many members

and how many posts are in there.

So there are some communities
that have a lot of members

but only a tiny bit of posts,
so there's a lot of people in here

but not a lot of activity happening.

I would maybe prefer to be in one
that has a lot of members

but also has a lot of activity happening.

And you can go into a community
and take a look at the kinds of posts

that are being shared there
and see if its something

that is interesting to you.

If it is, you can just click on the
community, go into the community

and then you can click this button
to join the community.

Now some communities you can join
without having to ask,

but in some communities,
the moderators have turned on a feature

that makes them, gives them permission
to mod..., to control who joins.

So you may see that button say
"ask to join" or it may just say "join."

Here is a way you can find some
communities

if you are looking for communities
for something specific.

You can do a search here in the
Google Plus search bar.

So here at the top of my
Google Plus profile I can search

for something here.

Let's say you are interested in
using Chrome Books.

So I'm going to do a search
for Chrome Book

and its going to search through
everything on Google Plus

but if I'm just looking for a
community,

I'm going to click here on
communities and its going to find for me

all the communities that have
anything to do with Chrome Book.

And you can see there are quite a few.
So I may want to go into some of these

and see which ones of these are active.
This one looks like its pretty active.

So I'm going to take a look at that
community and see what kinds

of resources and posts
are being shared

and if there is something great
happening in that community

that you want to be a part of
you can just join the community.

So this one you don't have to
get permission to join.

You can just join.

Then another thing you can do
after you join a community

is you can turn notifications on
if you would like to be notified

whenever someone makes
a new post.

Now this is a great thing in most cases
because you don't have to remember

to keep checking the community
to see if there has been new activity.

Right here it tells me that I have
notifications "off" but if I turn

notifications on just by clicking here,
I can toggle this on and off

and now I'll get a little notification
up here in my little notification space.

I'll get a notification when something
new has been posted here.

So that way I wouldn't have to come
back and check on this every so often.

I'm going to keep notifications off
because this is a pretty active community

and I would be getting quite
a few notification.

You can see there have been
several posts just this afternoon.

I don't want all those notifications

but you may have communities
you do want notifications on,

for example, this community for a course
I'm teaching this semester,

I have notification on because I want to
know when one of my students

posts a question or shares a resource
or posts an assignment

or something like that.

That's all about
finding communities,

and joining communities,
and using communities.

If you wanted to create your
own community,

this is where you would go to do that.

So you click "create community" and
you can choose

whether it is a private community
or a public community.

Now a public community will allow
anyone in the world to join.

A private community means that
you can only invite specific folks.

So lets say we're going to do
a public community

and here is where you can choose
where you can control people who join.

So you can either say,
no, anybody can join

or yes, people can ask you to join, but
then you have to approve their joining.

So I'm just making a fake community
called, "demo."

Its going to show you
if there's anything similar already

because you may be starting
to create a community and realize

oh, there is already a community
like that.

Then you would just create your own
and that community would be

an actual community. Then you can
share that link with other people

and invite specific people
to your community.

So I encourage you now to go
browse some existing communities

find one to join or find several
and create your own and invite

people to that community.

So go ahead and get Googling.