Google Hangouts and Whiteboard

As part of our assignment for the week, we had to get together as teams of two and try out a new tool that we had never tried before, and play hangman online. Brad and I decided to try out Google Hangouts, as neither of us had tried it before. As it turns out, it does not have a white board option, but we found a plugin for Hangouts through www.webwhiteboard.com that was supposed to add the white board feature to the site. Unfortunately, the white board showed, but nothing else; we could hear our voices and see each other, but we could not draw cooperatively. So, we clicked on the other option also offered in the website, and we were able to use a whiteboard on one browser tab while Google Hangouts was still open on the other tab! Success -- we played a very smooth and fun game with voice and even video, if we wanted to switch tabs. It was super fun and we played for an hour! I found that the response time for the program was amazingly fast and the options were super fun to play. It was like playing face to face. It's amazing how we can have no distance barriers anymore; I can see this being so useful if trying to design something or share a visual idea over the Internet. It's so exciting to think of all the possibilities. I want to find an even better art option online to collaborate over the Internet.