Dan Feinberg and Dave Ghidiu shared their insights on various collaborative tools they use as they have had to work on projects at a distance. One works in the Albany area and the other works in the Rochester area. Together, they have created some great work.

Trello

While I have heard a lot about Trello, I have never seen or used it. I was very fascinated with what they had to share.

Dave uses it for to-do lists and projects. Specifically, he used it with his class for a game design course.

Trello is based around boards and cards. Cards hold the information for the task and can be moved from board to board in a workflow. Other team members can be added to boards and cards. You can also embed documents into a card.

One of the coolest features demonstrated was exporting a board to a Google Slides deck. You can then publish the slide deck and embed it in another web product.

Google Drive

Dan and Dave use Google apps extensively and store all their shared documents in Google Drive. The TEI team has also moved to this method of operating and it has been fantastic.

• Tools and Methods – Google Applications
• Tools and Methods – Google Drive
• Tools and Methods – Google Docs
• Tools and Methods – Google Sheets
• Tools and Methods – Google Drawing
• Tools and Methods – Google Slides
• Tools and Methods – Google Forms

Slack

Dan and Dave have also started using Slack, and feel it is an indispensable tool. The TEI team agrees. Slack uses channels to organize conversations. You can choose to join channels around conversations you are interested in.

JCC has a Slack site. You can readily join if you have a SUNY JCC email account. If you want to learn how to use Slack, I recommend reviewing the LinkedIn Learning course.

Here are other resources I have squirreled away regarding Slack.

Insightly

Dan spoke about Insightly. Basically, Insightly is a client relationship management tool. He uses it to manage interactions with the many people spread across the SUNY system. He tracks interactions based on organizations, projects, or individual contacts.

The TEI team is also using Insightly as a way to provide better service to our faculty.

Dan and Dave shared a lot of great ideas for using these different collaborative tools. If you are interested in exploring these programs further, please contact me. I would be happy to demo these programs.