Our Group is number 4. The members other than myself include Suzanne, Charlene and Ariel. We were all present when we met on Sunday, October 7, to brainstorm about our Group Leadership Project. We were pretty organized because we had started a Google Doc earlier in the week and were brainstorming about our brainstorming before we actually engaged in the brainstorming. This proved quite beneficial as we had an organized and straight forward meeting together in which we stormed our brains and planned our project.
Google Hangout was our meeting venue of choice. {**************In our Google Doc we decided on Google Hangout, mainly because it was free, available to all of us, and we could learn how to record our session in it, which is something none of us had done, but wanted to learn to do. We were interested in learning a new web conferencing tool to build our repertoire. I have used Adobe Connect myself, as an administrator, which is why I didn't feel the need to utilize that web conferencing tool. I was finding the threat of way too many adds on Vyew daunting, just thinking about it. And the other web conferencing tools featured in the lab either cost money or were ones that I didn't think I would use often. As a group, we wanted to learn something that would be of value to us, not just for this assignment, but in our teaching careers. All of my students can have access to Google Hangout and will understand how to use it. The entire group felt this way as well and we thought we would like to become fluent in Google Hangout. We learned a good deal from our experience and I am eager to learn more.******************} The advantages of the Google Hangout technology were that we had no problems using it, and it was free. We could all hear and see each other well, while we each contributed, typed, planned and checked out internet resources as needed. We could all accomplish all these tasks independently on our own single computers, while sitting in our respective homes, resulting in a very productive meeting. Additionally, we recorded our session, not worrying about the length of it, knowing that it would be accessible later on You Tube. Our brainstorming session can now be viewed online and is accessible to anyone with the link and an internet connection. This is another advantage because it means that there would be no problems with downloading or accessing the video of our brainstorming session at a later date. This is a really nice feature of Google Hangout that I am sure I will use often in the future. Also, on Google Hangout, we could share our screen, watch You Tube videos together, play games, and the like.
One of the disadvantages of using this technology was really a matter mechanical issues with my computer. Unfortunately, my computer, a brand new Mac, was spinning it's Beach Ball of Death and wouldn't allow me to share my screen much, but the capability is there. Next time, I will close out some other applications prior to beginning a Hangout and maybe this won't be an issue. Nonetheless, we were able to plan out our project and agreed to meet the following Sunday on Google Hangout to follow-up on our progress.
During the brainstorming session, we chose to make a tutorial of LiveBinders, a technology that replicates a three ring binder. This digital binder can organize material, including videos, graphs, polls, websites, etc., much like a tangible three ring binder would. Later, we chose to switch out the technology, but I will get to that below.
Being that most of us have used Camtasia, but not Jing, we decided to go with that technology to capture our tutorial. I am happy to use this technology because it is a free technology that I have not used, so getting familiar with it will benefit me as a student and teacher.{************We plan on making three separate tutorials using Jing. The first will be an introduction to Google Hangout, including a discussion of how it can be useful to teachers to connect with their students, students to connect with students and maybe even teachers to connect with teachers, if need be. The second tutorial will illustrate how to create a Google account and use some other Google tools. The third tutorial will feature Google Hangout and how to set up a Hangout, how to broadcast "On Air", screen share with various tools and how the "On Air" session is uploaded onto You Tube. We don't mind that Jing has some time limitations because we thought that breaking our tutorial into sections would allow teachers to view whatever section is needed by them. For instance, some teachers may already have a Google account set up and not need to view that bit of information. Or, a teacher may need to watch the tutorial more than once. Having the tutorial in sections would be more convenient in that instance so the teacher wouldn't have to watch a long tutorial just to get to specific elements of the tutorial. **************}
We divided our work into two main sections. One subgroup will be the structural creators, and the other will produce and edit the tutorial itself. We all agreed, however, that we will keep Google Docs up and running for each section so that we can all be involved in the entire production of our project. We decided that we will be better informed about the final product and learn more this way. Therefore, Ariel and I will be responsible for deciding which elements of the technology will be taught in our tutorial and will create the storyboard and script that will be approved by the other members of the group. We will work together through a Google Doc. Charlene and Suzanne will then be responsible for bringing the storyboard and script to life in Jing, and then editing it to perfection. And, this will also be approved by Ariel and I. At the time of writing this post, we are working on the storyboarding phase of the assignment. We plan to have a full group meeting again on Sunday, October 14, in order discuss the storyboarding and script writing status. I would expect all work in this area to be completed Wednesday, October 17 in order to prep the Part B Group Leadership Project for submittal. Once we are satisfied with the storyboarding element, Charlene and Suzanne will begin producing and editing our Jing tutorials featuring Google Hangout.
It is good that we developed such a solid plan at our brainstorming meeting, because the day after our group met, we decided to change the technology that would be featured in our tutorial from LiveBinders to Google Hangout. At the class Adobe Connect session, on Monday, October 8, with our wonderful instructor, Carolyn, Charlene and I were asking questions about some elements of our projects, when we suddenly felt an urge to feature Google Hangout in our tutorial. We emailed all the members of our group and they agreed, being that none of us had invested that much time in learning LiveBinders yet. We had invested some time developing the plan for our project, which we kept in tact. We merely switched out one technology for another and have since carried on without skipping a beat. We had such a good experience using Google Hangout at our brainstorming meeting, that this technology really seemed to be a more natural fit for us.
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