So the latest craze and development at Google and on the internet now is Google Wave. If you haven’t seen the Google Wave Developer Preview from Google I/O, you have to watch it. Google is going to change the face of the internet as we know it with Google Wave. Google Wave is going to be released open source for developers to add onto. I’m sure after you watch the Google Wave Preview you will hopefully have your mind blown and see as I see Google Wave.

One major issue that online education has is real time collaboration. Education institutions are communities to collaborate and learn from one another. People often times say the major weaknesses of online education is that you don’t learn some of the same team building skills and social skills that normal students do that get a traditional on campus degree. Depending on what career you are looking into and training for, that face to face collaboration may be important. Most collaboration now a days is either done through a digital medium or documented through some type of a digital medium. Google Wave is going to help make real time, online, cross platform collaboration a reality. It’s going to take the elements of many different applications that have been separate from one another and bring them together. It will allow the extending of other applications through the Google Wave interface.

Some of the Google Wave extensions or plugins I would like to see come together that I believe will help in the areas of education, support, and collaboration are:

• video communication
• audio communication
• screencasting
• project management
• scheduling
• time tracking

Google Wave will speed up communication and make communication more interactive, real, and more clear. I can’t wait to see how the internet evolves as Google Wave development becomes stable and releases. Be ready for the internet to change as we know it! Along with the change in the internet will come a major change in education and business.