As I mentioned in Part I of this blog, this was my first experience leading a hot team. I thought I'd share some thoughts on the team, a bit of our process and some interesting 'extra' information that I thought I'd share.
Our Hot Team
Luckily, I was made a part of an excellent team for this project that was engaged and worked well together. Just as a recap, our Hot Team consisted of:
- Dan Berman
- Cathy Holsing
- Chris Stubbs
- Kim Winck
Dan was, until Tuesday, an associate professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS) at Penn State. Dan is leaving Penn State for a new position at Temple University. Dan was on the team because he had actually taken the great leap and used VoiceThread for his online Roman archaeology course. As far as I know (which often isn't much), he is the only instructor to use VoiceThead so far here at PSU. It was great getting to know Dan during this project and I hope to stay in contact with him. Even though I am new to State College, it turned out he and I have a common contact in Garrett Fagan, another associate professor in the CAMS department. Ironically, Garrett is my next door neighbor. But since Dan is moving, I guess I won't see him at the cookouts this summer!
Cathy is a Senior Instructional Designer in Outreach and Online Education for the College of the Liberal Arts. I met Cathy on the Grassroots video Hot Team and she had worked with Dan to setup his VoiceThread for the Roman archaeology class. In fact, it was Cathy who had presented VoiceThead at an ID meeting earlier this year that gave birth to the idea of doing the VoiceThread hot team. Cathy is wonderful to work with and since we've been on two teams together, I may request her for all hot teams that I participate in.
Chris is a resident instructional technologist here in ETS. At least, I believe that is the title he should have right now. Chris was the 'technology guy' in our group and helped us seek out the critical technical information during our research period.
Kim is in Video Production and Design for the Digital Commons. I first worked with Kim during the Biology 12 project this spring and was glad to have her expertise on hand. Kim really put VoiceThread "through the ringer" from a usability and content creation viewpoint.
A Bit about Process
The team met once a week for almost two months. We explored with the tool as well as researched what others were doing with it. We kept all notes and documents in Google Docs, which works fabulously for such a collaborative writing project. As interesting as that part of the process was, the project became a lot more fun when we started contacting external resources for information (see below). These conversations were key to a deeper understanding of the tool and, perhaps more importantly, allowed us to build some nice relationships.
Obviously, the most unique part of this project was our hot team creating its own VoiceThread, or as we called it, a 'Hot Thread'. While most of us have written a paper, how many can say they created a VoiceThread? We had limited time to develop it but the creative process was still fun and definitely helped keep the team motivated toward the end of the hot team process.
Speaking with Sources: University of North Carolina and VoiceThread co-founder
In researching VoiceThread, we were able to make some great contacts at the University of North Carolina where they have integrated VoiceThread into their technical infrastructure. Kathleen Kyzer and Suzanne Caldwell were our points of contact and they couldn't have been more pleasant and open to talk with. They are in the ITS Teaching and Learning Center Center at UNC. We provided them with a list of questions in Google Docs and shared it with them. They replied into that document and then joined us for an hour-long conference call for further discussions. That conversation was very insightful for all of us on the hot team. Here is the document we shared with them if you are interested.
We also got in contact with one of the cofounders of VoiceThread, Steve Muth. He was great, responding to our requests almost immediately. Take a look at his direct answers to our questions. I found him very approachable and forthcoming with information. Dan had been in direct contact with Steve when he was developing his VoiceThreads and he remembered Dan quite well (for good reasons, mind you). He had also worked closely with our contacts at UNC during their VoiceThread custom implementation.
If we need to dig deeper into the use of VoiceThread in the future, you can bet we will be contacting Kathleen, Suzanne and Steve!
One last artifact: If anyone has seen enough of the VoiceThread information to be interested enough to try it out, we found this well done Educator's Guide to VoiceThread. It's from Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Director of Online and Hybrid Support Center at California State University. She was an enthusiastic early adopter and user of VoiceThread. It's a very good 'Getting Started' guide for anyone ready to give VoiceThread a real try within a course.
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