Week # 13 Current_Event

From the beginning of the formation of the Panda team, our group members were able to build a strong online community where we are able to share and discuss weekly tasks and current events.  Although our group's schedule do not allow us to meet face-to-face or through text, we have been able to work together to find a way of communicating effectively with one another.  Here are a list of the three methods we the pandas have relied on to communicate with one another.

1. Laulima - we started off with using the forum discussion for our group to share our thoughts, ideas, and resources with one another.  Being that most of us were still working on becoming better technology literate, this was the most reliable way that we could keep in touch and up to date with our weekly current events.  We also used the laulima forums to check what additional information each group member has added combining our thoughts and ideas to summarize our current events.  In addition to the laulima forums, we were able to discuss any issues that we may have with any assignments whether it would be a group assignment or individual ones.  Laulima really helped us to be constantly informed with pretty much everything to do with the course. 
2. Typewithme.com - thanks to one of our team members, Kortnee, we were able to move a step forward to using another method of communicating with one another.  Type with me is a pad that works quite like google doc.  You are able to view multiple works on the pad and all at the same time you are also able to add your own input or make additional improvements to the pad all at once.  The pad has a setting that will show who each person is by name and color, that way you are not confused on who is doing what.  What ever your input is, that information will be highlighted in a certain color, all group members will have different colors.  There is also a chat box where you can communicate together showing the names of each member and what ever they type in.  So this was a really neat tool that allowed us to meet online at a particular time.  This is the tool that we used to meet up weekly and it was and continues to work well for our group.
3. Email - we would not be able to communicate without being informed of what's going on in our group if not for the use of emailing, particularly our UH email.  When any post are made on the laulima forum, each group member will be informed about it as soon as the post is up.  It not only shows who posted but what they posted as well.  This works out great for our pandaNation because most of our group members are so busy through out the day that it makes it difficult for some to log on to laulima and go through all the process of getting on to our groups forum.  Through the email, group members will know almost instantly that someone within our group has posted in laulima and we are also able to view right away what and when they posted.  When time allows, we are able to then go into laulima and reply or post additional information.  The email also works well for letting our group know the scheduled time for our meeting weekly.