Hi!

I'm Aanu. Welcome to week 3 of my internship with Outreachy and Oppia.

If you are new here, you can check out my previous post on my introduction to the Outreachy internship and the Oppia project.

How it's going?

It's been 3 weeks of detailed work, and devotion to active involvement with the Oppia project. My project topic is titled: Creating effective and engaging online lessons on Basic Science and/or Digital Skills.

Over the course of these last 3 weeks, my mentors, colleague and I have had to reorganize timelines, and check for ways to make things better, and faster too, because meeting up with deadlines is of essence.

Why did I have to say that?

Well... I wanted to make you aware that everybody indeed struggles! I for one.

G.O.O.G.L.E

In the course of working on my project, I have unraveled some of the inner beauties of Google I never knew existed.

I got to see how the developers of Google are so intentional about making teamwork easier and better. It's been of tremendous help in making our teams collaborate better, and it's so easy to use.

Here are some of the Google apps we are indebted to for making virtual teamwork easier:

• Gmail-of course!

• Google drive- amazing!

• Google docs- more about it in a bit

• Google meet- gives me the liberty of seeing my mentors on video calls :)

• Google calendar- more about it in a bit

• Google chat- I'm new to it, but it's incredible!

• Chrome (not for teamwork, more of personal use.)

Google docs

I wouldn't say I am entirely new to Google docs. I've had a series of encounters with using it, but not so often-maybe because it always requires you having an internet connection before you can do anything on it; and it's no news, in Nigeria, we don't have access to WiFi the way some foreign countries do, and because of this, I'm always 'managing' and switching off my mobile data. (I opt for the offline mode of Microsoft word on mobile phones or WPS on my laptop.)

Now, working with Oppia during this internship, I'm seeing how much I have been missing out by not using Google docs. Especially for team collaborations, I get to receive comments on selected texts in the document. This way, I get to know where exactly my mentors have made a comment on, or need me to revise.

This is amazing? Isn't it?

I can imagine the stress teams would have to go through if this 'select text' and 'comment' mode was not available on Google docs. It would have been a longer route to achieving some of the things we now achieve in a jiffy with Google docs.

Google calendar

With Google calendar, I learnt I can RSVP events- that means I can indicate whether I would be able to attend the different meetings, and even add short notes to these events!

By the way, Google calendar sends me notifications 30 minutes before my meeting times. Helps me to stay on track.

Another important aspect of Google calendar is that I can have links to the different documents that pertains to a meeting attached to it. This has come in handy so many times when there is an influx of mails, and I don't want to go back to Gmail to search for the documents. I found out I can easily access it on Google calendar, because we have the links attached to the meeting dates.

Thank you for sticking with me these few minutes!

I'll be getting back to my Outreachy tasks. Bye! :)