Currently in beta, this new, realtime collaboration tool is packed with so many possibilities I think it will become very popular in education. I gave it a try and this is what I found out. Adding participants to your collaboration board is very easy, just send them an email link and they join very quickly if they are using an Mac or a PC, but it will not work with an iPad due to the fact that it is Flash-based.
I have used other tools like this and the thing that makes this different (and I greatly appreciated it) is that it directly connects to your Google Drive documents. This makes for easy access to all your online, stored documents that can be accessed from any PC or Mac. Insertion of images from URL took a very long time to load, but images and PDFs was nearly instant. I did not understand why the URL link took such a long time. The sticky note feature worked flawlessly, but they had to be zoomed-in to see (not a problem, really). Making comments on any particular object or point was very easy to do and is nicely collaborative.
My big criticism of this tool is that it is Adobe Flash-based, but this is only because I like things to work with iPhones, iPad and all mobile devices. An html5 based tool would have solved this, but with some features not working as well. I still recommend this for long-distance meetings, group projects, demonstrations/presentations that involve all or most participants having their own computer connection. Yes, it s FREE for now, but keep in mind that it is in beta and many times companies like this go to premium when the beta is ready for the road.
