Google+ opened today. Chinese learning resource?

[querido]

Is anyone starting a Chinese-learning and/or Chinese-English exchange Google+ "circle"?

One or more probably already exist.

It would be like a "Chinese Club" but require no physical presence nor cost anything, and all of one's study aids (text, audio, video nciku, etc.) could attend too.

[Kenny同志]

I noticed this feature this morning. What is it for?

[Mouseneb]

I've been doing this for about a month now:

http://mouseneb.livejournal.com/#post-mouseneb-30557

Anyway, if you're posting learning resources, please add me, I'd love to see them!

https://plus.google.com/116939697102412430399/posts

[querido]

"What is it for?"

I haven't used it yet. It's a social network with group videoconferencing and a feature that allows one to collect friends into subsets, called "circles", for special purposes.

I think linked members could freely include and exclude people from a circle in order to focus its purpose. Right, Mouseneb?

"if you're posting learning resources"

Feel free to search this subforum for my posts!

"please add me"

Hey, you'll be my first. Thanks. :-)

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for your information Querido. Unfortunately, I can't open it here; not sure if it is blocked. ：）

[Hesham119]

https://plus.google.com/111848695758861776926/posts

thats my profile

lets share resources together

[querido]

Thanks Hesham119 :-)

Let me clarify what I meant by the thread title.

I meant "Google+ as a Chinese learning resource".

I didn't mean primarily "sharing Chinese learning resources on Google+", as we already have this excellent Resources subforum!

It would be like a "Chinese Club" but require no physical presence nor cost anything, and all of one's study aids (text, audio, video nciku, etc.) could attend too.

Can Google+ serve well as a virtual classroom? Discuss?

Can I demonstrate it and then convince my scattered Chinese-learning friends to gather there?

[chrisxjohnson]

Hello everyone,

Using circles for Chinese exchange would be great! Feel free to add me -

https://plus.google.com/100768237142962131410/posts

you can also make a hangout public and anyone can join for discussion once you publish the date and time. Seems an interesting idea, lots of options. Would be great to get something set up,

我希望看到你们！

chris

[imron]

It would be like a "Chinese Club" but require no physical presence nor cost anything

So......sort of like these forums

[querido]

Thanks everybody. I'm proceeding cautiously. It looks good so far.

I have flashcards to do...

[putonghua73]

Google+ is a social media network that has a number of main differences from Facebook:

1. Group people into 'Circles' - allows you to set access and privacy for each circle and keep what each circle sees and has access to completely separate e.g. a public 'Chinese' circle could have access just to resources and conversations set for that circle and nothing else

2. Google dashboard - all features are accessed from a single page / dashboard i.e. user-friendly and intuitive to navigate

3. Google implement cool features and functionality a lot better than Facebook

4. It is still officially beta

5. Smaller user-base due to it's infancy

After the recent changes on Facebook, namely intermingling top stories and news-feed, creating a side-bar with a mashup of these posts that you cannot disable and remove (all posts in this side-bar ignore personal privacy settings i.e. you can see replies and posts by friends of friends) and removing chronology and time-stamps, I decided it was time to deactivate my account. I'll complete the migration process tonight (not sure whether to migrate my pictures to Flickr or Google+).

Facebook is more interested in telling you how you will view your own content. It's a shame in some ways because a lot of my friends / acquaintances may not migrate and we'll lose contact, but I feel it is the right time and right decision to quit.

So I'd be interested to see how a Chinese learning circle would pan out.

[c_redman]

https://plus.google.com/108668538134833438671/posts

I set up an account I intend to use for Chinese study. I'm not on Facebook, so I have no idea what benefit it has over blogs and forums. It allegedly has some kind of collaborative video watching, which would be great for teaching or group study, if it works that way.

The design is oddly stark and colorless, and I don't really know what to do with it at this point. There isn't much information you can put on your profile. This forum, in contrast, has all kind of things you can put on your profile to tell people about yourself or how to contact you, and it's quite intuitive to know what to do to get information out there. Likewise, I'm familiar with the iTalki social network, which is also better designed and more intuitive than Google+. I was never on Facebook, so I'm basically a novice with social networks.

[querido]

kenny2006woo: It's working for Mouseneb. Maybe an *invitation* will help. I sent one to your MS live address.

[Kenny同志]

Thank you very much for invitation, Querido, but unfortunately, I still can't open the link you sent me.

Anyway, we can share our ideas here.

[Meng Lelan]

Chinese Forums is enough for me, thank you, and even then I struggle to even think of anything to say here.

[putonghua73]

To add an addendum to my previous post, and to contextualise Querido's original point, Google+ has much stronger social, connectivity features than Facebook IMO (as MUCH better and easier privacy settings that are not overridden - unlike Facebook).

Let me explain the concept of 'circles' better. You can add people to 'circles' (groups) and create new 'circles' i.e. I could create a 'Chinese Learners' circle with whom you can choose to share content.

When you add content to Google+ either through sharing personal details about you, updating your profile feed, posting an article, adding a link, commenting on someone's else post, etc, you can choose with whom (which circles) you wish to share. If you click Mouseneb's link, you'll notice that most of her posts are 'Public' i.e. she has chosen to share her posts with anyone on the Web. Where you see 'Limited', the user has chosen to limit these posts to specific circles.

Example: I can choose to share all of my photo galleries with my 'Friends' and 'Family' circles but not my 'Chinese Learners' circle (whom may not have an interest). Likewise, I could add all of the users in this thread to my 'Chinese Learners' circle and only share Chinese related content with them. They may not be interested in other non-Chinese content that I may choose to share with my 'Friends' circle - such as my Top 10 Asian women I'd like to bang before I die (whether my friends are actually interested in this is an entirely different question!).

With regards to the other question on the purpose of Google+ in relation to a Chinese resource, I guess it's more an additional Chinese resource if people wish to form a learning circle to aid each other and maybe follow a learning plan e.g. reading a textbook, doing a set chapter and learning vocab a week, then having chats / video calls to discuss the learning or language exchanges.

The media and everyone else has jumped on the social media bandwagon without stopping to think what people actually exchange on these types of sites / platforms. Old-skool BBS forums such as this one or other specialist / niche forums e.g. think 'Tripadvisor' or 'Lonely Planet Thorn Tree Forum' for travel - to my mind - are the backbone of the 'net in terms of being able to explore an interest, finding like-minded people and forming a community by exchanging information and content and forming meaningful relationships. In other words, it's content (what people post) and the community around it which are King and Queen.

The whole social media bandwagon is more about commoditizing user information / content, packaging and marketing it to companies to monetize you. All the talk about "soulful" and meaningful relationships and "personalisation" is bull-crap.

Facebook has been diminishing chat and group pages and focusing on changing the user-experience to make it easier to commoditize and sell you as a product. Hence, why I have deleted my account on Facebook because I felt more and more cheapened.

[querido]

Setting up the "Hangout" required a plugin but was otherwise effortless.

Hey putonghua73, I thought you were working on the art of brevity. :-) Remember? :-) I was disappointed that you didn't really want to talk about it. As I probably already said: If you're verbose they won't bother reading it, but if you cut it down to a key principle they won't understand what you're saying. The effective tool, to reach the masses, is a dumbed-down blurb of humor or snark. This is the language of mass-media, their actual language. I don't feel like stooping to that, so I'm always disappointed with groups.

I feel like giving up on my native language, and on communicating anything substantive with those who speak it, as the little world of the simple Chinese sentences I can read and write is such a relief. Ever feel like the load, in your mind, in your native language, is a burden? I do.

About your deletion of your Facebook account: I did too and for the same reasons (with as you know two weeks before it's final). But, I realized then that I had no good place to gripe and complain; everywhere else there is some need to maintain the positive, etc., to be helpful, etc., such as in this forum. I might actually reopen it; why should I avoid family and real-life friends because my (written) communications with them are painfully unrewarding, yet keep strangers, here, and suffer the same heartburn? I don't want to complain on google+ either because I'm trying to make *new* friends; better keep the old friends too, eh?

[putonghua73]

Apologies for the delayed response. I responded to my own profile feed.

I share a similar feeling - but for entirely different reasons - that using my simple Chinese sentences, I can sometimes convey more complex thoughts because I am less verbose; simply by dint of possessing a smaller Chinese vocabulary. I'm interested in taking up classical Chinese for this very reason (conveying complex meanings with a few, well-chosen characters).

I would tentatively suggest that if your communication with your family and friends are unrewarding than the problem lies somewhere between your communication, your expectations or you need to different friends with whom you share a deeper and more rewarding relationship.

Since this is now off-topic, I'll stop. I'll add my Google details once I have time to devote sufficiently to my Chinese studies to make a study group / session worthwhile.