Overview: Project Technology; Learned, Use, & Challenges

This is an overview on what we as a team learned from working with various technologies, how we used it, and what our challenges were. To start with, and I do believe, myself and the other team members had some similar experiences in what we learned in using the technologies and the challenges we faced. Much of the web technologies were new to me. I hadn’t even looked at them before this project. Some of the other web technologies; I had looked at, but never had sat up my own account. Some of the challenges I faced was to set up an account of my own on some these web technologies. Not only that, I had to learn to setup my page on the account and from there with the team members, we had to figure out how to contact each other using a web technology that was new to most of us. We as a team also had to figure out (a challenge) which web technology would work the best for us to do this team project, with the time we have to do the project and our technical savvy taken into account. Almost all the web technologies we looked at, we learned, members working on a team project do not have to communicate in real time. One member could be awake at their computer at the office, writing information to the other members who are sleeping at home. When the sleeping members wake up and read the information, they can write back and the first member could be the one sleeping. A problem can arise though, with many of the web technologies, as we know, a person doesn’t have to be there in real time to receive information, it can sometimes take awhile before someone sends information back to you because they were busy with other things and didn’t get a chance to look at the message you sent. Some of the technologies try to help with this problem, by an option; people can have a message sent to their cell phone, telling them that a message has been received at their web account. Working in real time does have its advantages, such as Meebo or Instant Messaging; it is quicker and easier for people to play off of each other’s ideas to come up with better ideas. However, not everyone is on the same schedule and it is hard to find a time that everyone can agree to get together and talk. Some of the web technologies we looked at and played around with are; Blog (www.blogger.com), Wiki (www.pbwiki.com), Twitter (www.twitter.com), Blackboard (blackboard.nwtc.edu), Google docs (www.google.com), Meebo (meebo.com).