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This tutorial is an introduction
to Google Plus Communities.
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In order to access Google Plus Communities
you need to be a Google Plus user.
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So you are going to first need to
activate your Google Plus account.
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You can do that from you inbox,
your gmail inbox, or you can go to
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plus.google.com to get started
with Google Plus.
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Google Plus Communities
are shared spaces on line
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where folks can come together
to share ideas, to share resources,
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and to collaborate with each other.
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Here are just a few of the ways
people are using Google Communities.
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I use Google Communities
for a couple of the courses that I teach.
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Its gives us a shared space online
where we can post comments and ideas,
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share resources, ask questions.
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If you are using it with students,
they need to be over, 13 or older.
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You can also use it with other
professionals that you work with.
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With your colleagues or
connecting with parents,
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or folks who have similar interests.
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So these are just a few of the
communities that I am a member of.
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Some of these communities
I moderate
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which means that I sort of
set the structure for that community
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and some of these I created
and some of these I joined
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that others created that were
interesting to me.
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And you can see that communities
range greatly in the amount of members
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that they have.
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You may be looking for a community
that has a lot of members
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and a lot of activity happening
or you may be looking for
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a smaller close nit community
with just a smaller group of people
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sharing resources for a specific purpose.
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Communities can be private or public.
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As you can see here there is a community
for a course that I teach
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that is a private community.
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Only folks who I invite
can be part of that community.
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These other communities are public
and open to anyone.
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Here is just a small sampling
of communities that are available
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in Google Plus. There are lots and lots
of communities already out there.
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You can see alot of these have quite
a few members.
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So you can browse and find communities
that are already existing
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where people are already active
and having conversations with each other,
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sharing great ideas and resources, and
you can join those existing communities.
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Or you can create your own if there is
a specific purpose that you want
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to collaborate with other folks about.
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Here are some things that
Google Communities can do for you.
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You can get answers to your questions
and get feedback on your ideas.
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This is one of my favorite things about
Google Communities.
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If I'm pondering a new idea,
or just doing some brainstorming,
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or would like some advice,
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Google Communities is typically the
place I go for that.
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So I can just post a question.
I can put it into a specific community
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which is what I've done here.
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I created a community for
teacher educators.
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I can post a question in there
and you can see that I got 7 comments
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that were on this one question.
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People giving me advice and resources
and suggestions.
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So the purpose of a community,
of posting ideas in a community,
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is that people are there in this
community space on purpose.
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So membership in a community
is mutual.
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People choose to join
for a specific reason.
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They want to engage in conversations
with other people.
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They have an interest in whatever
the community is focused on
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and they are there on purpose.
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Now, not every member of a
community is an active member
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and you know is regularly participating
but lots of people are there on purpose
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and they are there because
they want to participate.
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So the odds are pretty good
that if you are a member of an active
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community and you post an idea
or question
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you are going to get some feedback
from the community.
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Which I just think is really valuable.
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You can also find some great resources,
connect with people who are like-minded,
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and if you are a twitter user Google Plus
can have some real advantages to you
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in that you can have lengthier
conversations than you can through twitter
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so I'm actually going to go into
Google Communities now
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and show you how to navigate.
Show you how to find communities
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and how to join them
and how to create your own.
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So here is my Google Plus page.
If I hover over the home button
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here in the top left corner,
I can find my option for communities.
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Now these are communities
that I moderate
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so these are either communities
I created,
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or communities that I am a member of
but also a moderator for.
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These are communities that other folks
created but I joined
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because they are about something
that I am interested in.
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Now if I scroll down here to the
section on discover communties
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I'll find other communities
that Google is recommending for me
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based on my profile
that I've set up previously,
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based on things that I post about,
and based on my existing communities,
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these are some recommendations for me.
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So I may want to just pop into some
of these and see what is happening there.
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You want to pay attention
to how many members
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and how many posts are in there.
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So there are some communities
that have a lot of members
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but only a tiny bit of posts,
so there's a lot of people in here
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but not a lot of activity happening.
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I would maybe prefer to be in one
that has a lot of members
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but also has a lot of activity happening.
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And you can go into a community
and take a look at the kinds of posts
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that are being shared there
and see if its something
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that is interesting to you.
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If it is, you can just click on the
community, go into the community
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and then you can click this button
to join the community.
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Now some communities you can join
without having to ask,
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but in some communities,
the moderators have turned on a feature
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that makes them, gives them permission
to mod..., to control who joins.
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So you may see that button say
"ask to join" or it may just say "join."
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Here is a way you can find some
communities
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if you are looking for communities
for something specific.
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You can do a search here in the
Google Plus search bar.
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So here at the top of my
Google Plus profile I can search
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for something here.
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Let's say you are interested in
using Chrome Books.
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So I'm going to do a search
for Chrome Book
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and its going to search through
everything on Google Plus
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but if I'm just looking for a
community,
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I'm going to click here on
communities and its going to find for me
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all the communities that have
anything to do with Chrome Book.
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And you can see there are quite a few.
So I may want to go into some of these
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and see which ones of these are active.
This one looks like its pretty active.
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So I'm going to take a look at that
community and see what kinds
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of resources and posts
are being shared
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and if there is something great
happening in that community
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that you want to be a part of
you can just join the community.
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So this one you don't have to
get permission to join.
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You can just join.
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Then another thing you can do
after you join a community
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is you can turn notifications on
if you would like to be notified
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whenever someone makes
a new post.
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Now this is a great thing in most cases
because you don't have to remember
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to keep checking the community
to see if there has been new activity.
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Right here it tells me that I have
notifications "off" but if I turn
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notifications on just by clicking here,
I can toggle this on and off
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and now I'll get a little notification
up here in my little notification space.
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I'll get a notification when something
new has been posted here.
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So that way I wouldn't have to come
back and check on this every so often.
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I'm going to keep notifications off
because this is a pretty active community
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and I would be getting quite
a few notification.
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You can see there have been
several posts just this afternoon.
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I don't want all those notifications
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but you may have communities
you do want notifications on,
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for example, this community for a course
I'm teaching this semester,
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I have notification on because I want to
know when one of my students
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posts a question or shares a resource
or posts an assignment
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or something like that.
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That's all about
finding communities,
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and joining communities,
and using communities.
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If you wanted to create your
own community,
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this is where you would go to do that.
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So you click "create community" and
you can choose
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whether it is a private community
or a public community.
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Now a public community will allow
anyone in the world to join.
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A private community means that
you can only invite specific folks.
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So lets say we're going to do
a public community
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and here is where you can choose
where you can control people who join.
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So you can either say,
no, anybody can join
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or yes, people can ask you to join, but
then you have to approve their joining.
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So I'm just making a fake community
called, "demo."
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Its going to show you
if there's anything similar already
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because you may be starting
to create a community and realize
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oh, there is already a community
like that.
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Then you would just create your own
and that community would be
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an actual community. Then you can
share that link with other people
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and invite specific people
to your community.
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So I encourage you now to go
browse some existing communities
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find one to join or find several
and create your own and invite
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people to that community.
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So go ahead and get Googling.