Distance Learning: Student Needs/Teacher Skills- VoiceThread

View our VoiceThread Presentation here:

http://voicethread.com/share/3221768/

Description of how the group collaborated in the making of the presentation:
     When I chose my group, no one else had picked it!  By that evening, Julia W had emailed both Bethanie and I with a proposed outline for our presentation.  We decided to use email and Google documents as our means of communication and collaboration. With us having conflicting schedules, we were not able to chat online about the presentation, but found that email would work just fine.  Email was easier for me because I was out of town with a school function and unfortunately I couldn’t be at a computer most of the time from Sunday till Thursday, but I could check my email at any time.   Everyone was quick to respond to any emails sent.

     After several emails discussing the format of the speech, we agreed on who would do each part of the presentation.  After deciding to use PowerPoint for our presentation, each person added their information to a slide show template that Julia created.  Bethanie and I sent our completed PowerPoint slides to Julia and she uploaded the presentation to VoiceThread, sending us an email to let us know. Each of us then went into VoiceThread and recorded the audio for the presentation. 

My experiences using VoiceThread:  

     This was my very first experience using VoiceThread.  Late last week and earlier this week I reviewed the information that was posted in the course, created an account and later in the week made a practice VoiceThread to see how it actually works. I was very pleased that it was so easy to use and understand.  When it came time to record for the presentation, I was also very pleased to see that you could delete or save the audio you just created!  Made it easy if you had to do more than one take.

     I watched several of the VoiceThreads available on the website to get an idea of how people present.  I was not impressed with the amount of monotone speaking that occurred, or the ums and all that. There were also videos that were very informative and well designed.   I liked the Voicethreads that were made by people sharing pictures or things of a more personal nature that others had commented on. 
 
     I like the option to have comments be either typed, audio only or by video.  I think that makes it for people to use since they do not have to be on camera with the information they are sharing with students or in another type of presentation.

The use of VoiceThread in my presentation/professional life:

     As with so many of these tools, I can think of several ways that I will be using VoiceThread in my professional life.

1.     I currently teach Public Speaking online.  Instead of having the power points for the chapter posted, I will be recreating those with the use of VoiceThread. This will appeal to a wider audience as it will bring in those who learn best by hearing. 

2.    With one of the new ‘things’ being to flip the classroom, I can see recording my lectures- again with the use of PowerPoint, video and VoiceThread and posting to our LMS- BlackBoard.  Student will be able to hear the lecture as many times as needed, plus that will free up more class time to use as lab time.

3.    When I grade speeches, I can use this tool to provide feedback to student videos and/or outlines.  I believe it will make it much more personable.

4.    I will show this tool to other instructors in our Spring Professional Development program at my school.  Since the beginning of this class, I’ve been making a list of Web 2.0 tools that might interest my co-workers and that are not a hassle to use.  VoiceThread is much easier than Panopto which is what our school uses for recordings.

5.    I will try to introduce my College Success Skills course to this tool through one or more assignments.  Most likely, they would be using it to share their response to a discussion question.