Collaboration is central to learning on the social Web. This guest post from Karen Schweitzer highlights some great free tools for connecting and sharing with others.
Being in the same room to collaborate on a project is no longer necessary thanks to the many different applications that are available over the web. There are free tools for online conferencing, collaborative writing and editing, file sharing, private communication, and desktop sharing.
Here are 15 free online collaboration tools and apps to try today:
Keep and Share – Keep and Share is a group file sharing system. Accounts are password-controlled and secure enough to store sensitive information.
Wridea – Wridea makes it easy to collaborate and share ideas with colleagues, team members, and fellow learners. This brainstorming tool organizes and categorizes ideas onto different pages, provides unlimited storage, and allows users to comment on topics and ideas.
Writeboard – Whiteboard is free collaborative writing software. It can be used to write, edit, track changes, and rollback to previous versions.
Twiddla – Twiddla works very well for online meetings or co-browsing. Groups can use it to mark-up and comment on web pages, images, and other content.
Spicebird – This open source platform is an all-in-one suite of communication tools for people who want to collaborate online. Features include email, instant messaging, and an online calendar.
Stixy – Stixy works like an online bulletin board or whiteboard. It offers a work space where you can place content and collaborate with other people on the web.
ReviewBasics – This free online service is great for people who are collaborating and editing different types of content. ReviewBasics allows users to share, annotate, and markup everything from images and videos to documents.
EditGrid – EditGrid is a web-based application that works a lot like Microsoft Excel. Special features include sharing, collaborating, and publishing capabilities.
ooVoo – ooVoo offers a free 2-way video chat service and a 6-way text chat. The site can also be used to record and send short video messages.
Palbee – Palbee is a free video conferencing tool with multiple capabilities. Users can conduct video meetings with other people or record a video presentation for later viewing.
GroupTweet – GroupTweet is designed for Twitter users who want to be able to communicate and collaborate privately.
Edmodo – Edmodo is rather like a private Twitter. Students and teachers can use this free (and private) microblogging platform to communicate online. Edmodo also provides file sharing and file storage.
SimplyBox – SimplyBox allows users to capture specific images, text, and video and then organize their finding into an easy-to-share box. Conversations and comments can then be placed around the box and shared once more.
Mikogo – This free desktop sharing software can be used for online meetings, web conferences, presentations, remote support, and other collaborative efforts. Mikogo is incredibly simple to use and download.
Vyew – Vyew is a relatively new collaboration platform that can be used for webinars, online conferences, and real-time learning and instruction. No installation is required and all activity can be tracked and logged.
Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online courses for OnlineCourses.org.
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P.S. – Let me know if you are using these tools or any others for collaborative learning. And please click the icon below to vote for this post on Association Jam!
Related posts:
- Collaboration and Learning – What Are Your Examples?
- Learning Apps – SpeedUpTV
- Getting a First-Rate Business Education Online – Free
- A Dozen Favorite Technology Tools for Lifelong Learning
- 10 Excellent iPad Apps for the Lifelong Learner
posted on August 12, 2009
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Hi,
Great article. One more application for your list:
http://www.imanageproject.com
Thanks
Welcome your review of our new free online collaboration platform SambaJAM
It’s powerful. Lets users sign up for free. Each user can create a workspace and invite other free users to join them. Provides rich document management, online collaborative editing of office documents, preview docs, video and images online, share and organise tasks and includes microblogging and profile pages. All you need to collaborate effectively online when working remotely.
Hello! You forgot to mention Teambox..you get 3 free projects and it’s similar to Basecamp but with a twitter-like platform to send direct messages. It’s easy and fun to use, i really recommend it. Great for managing tasks amongst different people and projects.
C
I use Box.net and iDrafts.net to collaborate online with business partners. I find iDrafts particularly good if I’m working on bigger documents and require document services.
Teambox is the ultimate collaboration tool for everything from task management to file storage and content editing. It has a facebook/twitter like activity stream and @notification system combined with the power of online conversations and project management.
It is completely free for up to three projects so small teams can use it without any expense. There is also a free open source edition.
I am currently using Dooster for FREE It’s a super online collaboration tool: http://www.dooster.net
RHUB is desktop sharing appliance that can be used for online meetings, web conferences, presentations, remote support, and other collaborative efforts. Pay a visit to http://www.rhubcom.com.
so good to have some cool apps for free! you can add to the list yet another nice tool that was released by C2 last month:
http://www.codetwo.com/outlook-sync/?main_flash&sts=980
am currently using it to share my outlooks calendars with my co-worker, very useful!
Adding to the list…Contrich ( http://www.contrich.com )…it is an online collaboration tool for Content Teams in a typical web application development environment. It has features like inline content editing, content review, automatic page verification and much more which can tremendously enhance productivity. Checkout the short video tutorial on the homepage.
Why is the Windows Live platform not listed here?
It provides 25Go of online storage, allows you to create a working group, integrates in Messenger for communications, uses Hotmail as email solution, each Hotmail account has access to Office WebApps (based on Office 2010) and it is very easy to limit the access to only the people who need to access the group/files/info.
Best of it all: it’s 100% FREE!
I’ve used it several times and it works very smoothly and everything is interconnected/integrated… Have a look at http://explore.live.com and give it a try creating your own group on http://groups.live.com.
It’s worth a try, secured; provides productivity, communication and collaboration tools; and it’s very easy to use! What else to ask for?
one more thing… Windows Live Group also has a calendar integrate with to-do lists… quite handy for tracking projects…
And it can even be integrated in your Outlook calendar (using different color codes for different calenders) or in the Windows Live Mail client…
Hi!
There is free basic plan at web-based online collaboration tool http://www.projektino.com, which allows you to create projects, create tasks within the project, assign tasks to people, set due dates for tasks and the project itself and there is a place to write notes back and forth about the project. It will be soon sync with Google docs as well as Google calendar.
Another one for your list is CloudShare’s IT collaboration tool – http://www.cloudshare.com/Products/Products-Overview.aspx.
This can be used for testing and demos of your entire IT systems and enterprise applications such as SharePoint 2010.
Our small business company has deployed a collaboration tool from Workforcetrack and you can check this software out.
Great article!
Great article. Another for your list is OffBureau, an online workspace (http://www.offbureau.com)
Definitely a good read. Another collaboration tool that’s been really useful for me is mavenlink (http://www.mavenlink.com) great interface, super user friendly.
I have been using Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com) along with Mavenlink above. Depends on what type of projects you need to collaborate on: software dev vs. standard projects. Great list though.
Here is another one, Ooogwave. (http://www.oogwave.com)
Has anyone tried or using it !
Can someone share insights or their comments.
We got Dooster some months ago and were given the option of a free trial period which was an incentive. We like it a lot and the customer service has been good. Our systems are working better now which is nice – less nervy. I think collaboration software is worth using to make your life easier if you’ve people working remotely or flying in and out of the office.
Excellent post.Yes recently I found one such free tool http://www.oogwave.com I am using it and it works fine for me. It some what very simple and easy to use. That’s all I can say.
I did not realize there were so many online collaboration tools. It helps to have some of them listed in one place with a brief description of how they work. Thanks.
Wiggio is a another free resource that makes it easy to collaborate on projects. With Wiggio, you can upload files in one place, create events on a shared calendar, send mass emails and text messages, conduct real-time polls, and more.
Wiggio is completely free to use and offers each user and unlimited amount of space. You can check it out at http://www.wiggio.com.
There are many benefits to using an Online Collaboration Software when you are working on projects with a team that is spread out across the world. Even if your entire team is in the same country it can be hard to meet up in person to discuss important details of any project. Here we will tell you a few of the benefits that an online collaboration software can offer you when you are working on medium or large projects with a large team. There are many more benefits than this but you will understand from these few things how greatly valuable this tool can be for your business.
very informative and useful for our students
Jeff,
Great article and lots of good collaboration apps. Please also check http://www.binfire.com . It has great project management and collaboration features and a free plan with full functionality (limited by number of project and storage) for small teams is also available.
Collaboration software is a must-have in today’s workplace which is of course at home or in the taxi much of the time. We use Dooster which had a free trial period. We feel now as if we would have got it anyway though.
You can often tell the quality of a web article by the helpfulness of its comments. Here we find an engaged bunch of readers collaborating to make the article even more useful than the original author did, by contributing yet more awesome tools to the list. Well done, and thank you.
If you are looking for a really reliable and state of the art solution that has all-in-one pack and cost pennies try http://www.workcollaboration.com Free 30 days trial is available.
If you have any questions please write us at [email protected]
Great value for a great price. Complexity simplified.
Hi everyone,
I would also like to bring our online collaboration tool to your attention. Fabasoft Folio Cloud is available as a free “primo” edition with 5gb of online storage to use as you desire.
Please visit http://www.foliocloud.com/b2b-collaboration-with-international-partners_en.html to learn more about Folio Cloud and register right there.
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