Communication tools and teamwork

Match each situation with the most appropriate tool and justify your choice: (a) requesting formal information from the local council, (b) meeting up with friends for Saturday, (c) writing a piece of work among four people at the same time, and (d) presenting a project to a classmate who is sick at home.

Explain the differences between instant messaging and email: who usually reads each one, when a reply is expected, what tone is used, and how files are shared in each case.

An email has several parts: 'To', 'CC', 'Subject', 'Body text', and 'Attachments'. Explain what each part is used for and give reasons why there is a problem if the subject field is left blank or says only 'Hello'.

When replying to an email sent to multiple people, you can choose 'Reply' or 'Reply all'. Explain the difference and decide which you would use in each case: (a) confirming to the teacher that you received the homework, sent in an email to the whole class, and (b) providing a useful link in response to a question the teacher asked the whole group.

Emojis help set the tone of messages, but they are not always appropriate. Classify these three messages as 'suitable' or 'unsuitable' and justify your answer: (a) a 'thank you 😊' in a group chat with friends, (b) an email to the headteacher with three laughing emojis, and (c) a 'good job 👍' in the group's shared document.

The diagram compares two ways of working on the same document in a group of three people.

State which method you would choose for a group project and why, and point out a specific problem that can arise with the email attachments method.

In the group's shared document, someone accidentally deletes two paragraphs written by another person, and nobody notices until the next day. Explain what tools cloud documents offer to recover the lost text and what working guidelines would prevent this from happening again.

Shared documents support three permissions: view, comment, and edit. Explain what a person can do with each permission and assign the appropriate one in these cases: (a) the teacher reviews the draft, (b) your teammate works on the content, and (c) another group consults it as an example.

Explain the difference between a chat group, where everyone can post, and an announcements-only channel, where only the administrator can post. Which would you choose for official announcements from teachers to the class, and why?

A team video call fails: everyone talks at the same time, no one takes notes, and upon hanging up no one remembers what was decided. Propose rules of procedure for the next meeting and features of the tool itself that can help enforce them.

A task board has three columns: 'To do', 'In progress', and 'Done'. Explain how you would organise the distribution of project work on it: what is written on each card, who moves the cards and when, and what advantage it has compared to assigning tasks only verbally.

Your group has three weeks to do a project. Organise its communications: decide which channel you will use for each need (important decisions that must be recorded, quick day-to-day questions, final files, and catch-up meetings), and justify each choice.

Design the complete 'digital toolkit' for a school working team: the tools you would use to communicate, to organise tasks, and to share files, along with the rules of use for each one. Justify why this set covers all needs without duplicating channels.

In your class, five different apps are used to communicate: one for grades, another for tasks, another for announcements, and two chats. Analyse what problems this dispersion causes (unseen notices, doubts about where everything is) and propose simplifying to two tools, justifying what remains in each.