Technology

A new technology that could change professional communication is a new app that I have been shown, appear.in. I was shown this app by my deaf professor who teaches my Socio-Cultural Aspects of Deafness course. I think this could have changes in the way people communicate, not just for the deaf community, but for the hearing community as well.

The app appear.in is similar to Skype, or Facetime, but allows multiple users to have a group conversation. You can get the app for free and create an account and begin to make chat rooms. With the free version you can have up to four people in a room at once. If you upgrade you can have up to twelve people in a chat room for $9.95 a month. When you create a room, you share that link with whomever you want through email, a text message, or any other way that you can think of. Whoever you invite into your chat room are your ‘guests’ and they don’t need to register to become a part of the chat room. I think that will be a huge benefit to this app because everyone you want to communicate with does not have to have this medium in order to be part of the conversation. Instead of everyone having to have skype or messaging, you can set up any kind of conference call and they just have to be able to access the link to your chat room. You can use this app through any device.

Another great feature is the screen sharing option. You can have all those who are in the chat room able to see any screen or presentation medium all through this app. It makes it ideal for professional communication and presentations because you can have a large conference call and be able to see everyone and their reactions as you are going through your presentation. You also have the option to just have the screen of the presentation visible, but still can have audio.  I think this will change the way people communicate because it adds a visual aspect to the conversation. Lots of people have been in group texts and while they can be helpful this is like a group video text.

The main reason why I think this will change professional communication is because of the impact it has had on the deaf community. Deaf communication is all visible and this is a forum where everyone is able to see everyone at once. My professor likes to use it to communicate with his staff and be able to have everyone’s input at once. It is kind of like an upgraded version of the app Glide, which is similar to snapchat in that you record and send videos, but they videos don’t go away. It is designed specifically to send videos, essentially text messaging but in video format. My teacher likes this better because it is able to include more people. It changes communication by opening it up for more people to be a part of it.

https://appear.in/