Friday, October 22, 2010

Having fun with Voicethreads


I am still working on my mini-conference plan but am having a bit of fun with Voicethreads.

I'll see what happens .. I have shared the link with all FO2010 participants by email .... I hope somebody wants to play along.
Update as at 23 Oct 2010....
Carole and Sarah have both commented on my 'Highs and lows of online learning' voicethread.
Carole has empathised with the amount of info and my frustrations with technology. Her Voicethread presentation is 'amazing' check it out...epCop Voices
Carole has been a great help with technical aspects of getting my voicethread up and running. Thanks so much Carole
Sarah is interested in discussing more about the amount of information that we have to deal with throughout the course.
What info and activities should be dropped out and what should be left in the course?
How to keep things manageable but engage participants and give them the skills to think about online facilitation in a way that is going to be useful to them.
What are your thoughts?
Using Voicethread for facilitating a conversation
Sarah has challenged me to consider....
how I attract people to Voicethread
how I will keep the conversation gonig
what I want my outcome to be
how I instruct people about what Vt is
..........leave it with me Sarah ... I'll get back to you
How would you use Voicethread to facilitate a conversation?
Update as at 26th Oct
Sarah I am finally answering your questions about how to use Vt to facilitate a conversation.
I am thinking that I can attract people to Voicethread by making it as easy as possible to understand how to use it. I plan on making a screencast (using screenr) of how to use Vt and I am going to send (yet another) email telling them that other people have made comment on my Vt, so appealing to their curiosity.
How will I keep the conversation going?
So far the comments that have been made by Carole and Jane have been very honest and I think really insightful. the nature of Vt means that I t uhought I would be unable to add another comment but I have played around and worked out that I can add another comment to another slide/page in Vt. I have also attempted to continue the conversation here in my blogpost. I thought about linking it to a Facebook conversation but they never seemed to be very successful amongst the group.
My outcome..I had no intended outcome for this activity other than to familiarise myself with how Vt works and ask others to comment to play or introduce them to Vt. So far there has not been a huge response however the comments made have been valuable and I believe generated a very honest discussion.
How do I instruct people about what Vt is? I am thinking that I might create the screencast to istruct on how to use Vt, this would give me another opportunity to send an email communication. I could also use this screencast down the track, plus I will get a chance to play around in screencast (who knows what that could turn up?).
NB: I have coloured text for no other reason than to make it easier to read.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Kim,
    I'd love to play along. Unfortunately we don't yet have permission from you to do that in your Voicethread. Please add my email address (in the share section) so that I can view it and record in it.
    coachcarole2012(at)gmail.com
    I am doing a voicethread AS my final presentation and I've hit a few technical problems with the slides. So my VT is in a holding pattern while we sort those out.
    Great to see a fellow VT enthusiast.
    CC

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  2. Don't forget to think about how you attract people to voicethread...and how you keep the conversation going...what you want your outcome to be...how you instruct people about what VT is and how your measure the success of your outcome.

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  3. Good Morning Kim. I have just posted a comment on Voicethread for you and comments for Sarah. I think now I need some time between the course ending and making any better comment about it, I am still seeing mainly positives, which is amazing in itself.
    I found it easy to post a thought on vt. I think that is because I have become very used to talking into a mike, giving myself permission to say what comes along and not feeling judged on what that may be. I am thinking as I write this of Sarah's comments on OER that putting yourself out there with material can brings feelings of vulnerability through peer observation. With new things I often think of the old adage 'feel the fear and do it anyway'.

    Why would you use voice thread and how would you attract people to it, given there are now a plethora of tools to select from.

    Well for what it is worth; there are many people who can think and talk at the same time, in fact this may be a preferred form of providing feedback, especially where timezones are a consideration.

    You may be able to use vt to provide feedback on an assignments and tease out more information from a student through asking deeper questions. I see there is a text component and that would be useful for students to see and hear the question.

    there you go

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  4. Hi Kim, what you are dealing with are issues of engagement in the asynchronous environment. You have to work hard to do this when you consider only 1% people will actively take part in your activity.

    I think you did the right thing by reminding us about the VT with your second email.

    Have another look at the resources on the wiki that talk about asynchronous communication...is there anything that will help you attract more comments to your VT?

    http://wikieducator.org/Facilitating_Online/Resources#Facilitating_asynchronous_communication_.28email_groups.2C_discussion_forums_or_bulletin_boards.29

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