Groups (Forums)

Google Groups provides a convenient way for users within Special Olympics Ontario to send messages to groups of people they frequently contact or create discussion forums for topics of interest or in common subject areas (such as individual communities, sports or projects). A group contains the email addresses of its members, so users can send a message to all the group's members using the single address for the group. This reduces the amount of spam and concerns around mass mailing as conversations and information is kept on the group for easy reference later and users can control how they would like this information delivered.

Users can use groups to more easily:

• Communicate and collaborate with groups of people. For example, groups can be useful for departments, project teams, classes, office locations, special-interest groups, and more.
• Manage access to your documents, sites, videos, and calendars. Uses can share their content with groups instead of entering individual addresses. With a group, they can add or remove members once, and the changes are immediately applied to all the Google documents, sites, videos, and calendars that they shared with that group.
• Manage their group memberships, so they can tailor email communications to their needs, without having to make requests to your IT department.
• Create their own groups, so they can further customize their communications -- without the need to contact your IT staff. You can give this privilege to users and remove it at any time. If you let users create their own groups, they can managed their groups to control who can join, send messages, invite members, view members, and view discussion archives.

Special Olympics Users can easily create groups to communicate more easily with their departments, teams, task forces, and special-interest groups. They can also create groups that people outside your organization can send messages to.

Coaches, Volunteers and Communities can improve communications among their community by creating groups for their program, sport or subject interest. Community members in turn can use groups to reach other members, athletes, schools, sports teams or clubs.

Google Groups at Special Olympics are used to host the Sport and Program Discussion Forums (on the information portal) as well as discussion forums for topics of interest, and communities. The possibilities for this form of communication tool are limitless.

Special Olympics Google Groups are available at: http://groups.specialolympicsontario.ca

It is important to note that access to subscribe to, join or view most Special Olympics Ontario Google Groups does NOT require a Special Olympics Google Account. Individuals may sign up to participate in groups are forums with the email address of their choosing. However CREATING or MODERATING new groups is restricted to volunteers, coaches and users with @specialolympicsontario.ca email accounts.

For more information and help using Google Groups see the links below: