My first experiment with Voice Thread. Cathy Holsing showed this off today at the All-ID meeting. From outward appearances, it seems to be a slideshow tool. However, the results can be embedded in any site (including a blog post) and anyone can leave a comment in one of five ways: by recording an audio comment, recording a video comment, typing a text comment, uploading a file, or leaving an audio comment by calling a phone number. It's pretty amazing stuff.
This tool was developed at the University of North Carolina. I looked into the higher education integration licensing and (for a fee), they will give it a custom skin and integrate it with a university's authentication. I checked and Shibboleth was on the list.
So I talked with Matt Meyer about running a Hot Team to look at this tool more closely. I think it has a lot of potential. It's kind of like asynchronous video conferencing in that there is a conversation happening within each media object, but people aren't connecting at the exact same time.
So go ahead an leave a comment if you like. You'll need to get a VoiceThread account to make a comment, but if you're into these kinds of tools, that's not such a bad thing.
I've liked this for quite some time ... I wasn't aware that it could be licensed. I'm very interested in hearing more about the costs. A Hot Team is a great idea!
Thanks. The costs seem reasonable based on what I saw on their Web site, but factors like our size, integration, and ongoing maintenance have to be investigated. I asked Matt to work on this with the goal of having it completed in time for the Learning Design Summer Camp.