Theoretical Frameworks of Distance Education

Building the Project:
For Module 4 I chose to work in Group 3 which focused on answering the question of what theoretical frameworks or perspectives influenced distance education. I was happy to work with Christine and Isabel and work with some new programs I had not yet explored.
To collaborate, Christine, Isabel and I e-mailed and planned a time to meet together on SKYPE. We were surprised to find out that you cannot video message 3 people using the basic version of SKYPE. We could only hear each other through the calling feature. You have to pay for the upgraded version to video call more than 1 person. Regardless of our setback, we planned to do some research and share our findings. We broke the work up into 3 equal portions and began building our presentation using Google presentations. I found Google presentations to be user friendly, and loved the chat feature. My group could work on our presentation at the same time, and see what the others were doing. We chatted on Google which I found to be much easier to collaborate than e-mailing back and forth. Once our presentation was complete, we downloaded it into Powerpoint. The formatting did not transfer over correctly, so many changes needed to be made. After editing I uploaded the powerpoint in Voicethread, which I was not familiar with either.

My experience using Voicethread:
It was easy to register for Voicethread and get started creating a presentation. At first I tried to upload a Powerpoint directly, and after many minutes of waiting, realized that none of the titles were formatting correctly. I had to follow the step by step instructions of saving the slides as JPEGs and then uploading. Formatting was correct, but the slides did not upload in the correct order. Once in order I could then share the presentation with the girls to add comments. We decided to all add voice comments to keep it consistent. I found Voicethread to be user friendly, organized into browse existing voicethreads, create a new voicethread, and manage your own voicethreads. Adding voice comments was simple and I liked the fact that you can deleted and rerecord as many times as you need. Another feature I like is that the comments are displayed with a picture. I think it makes the presentation more personal. I did not like though that the text comment and voice comment can not be displayed at the same time. I wanted the text comment to be displayed while I was talking, to follow along. Comments are not simultaneous, but consecutive. Sharing the voicethread was also fairly easy.

I hope you enjoy our finished product and learn about the frameworks of distance education.
Click here to view and add comments or just watch below .






Using Voicethread in the future:
At first the dark colors and atmosphere of Voicethread make it a little intimidating for first time users. As a first grade teacher I am always looking for kid friendly programs that I could use for my classroom. I found a voicethread that a third grade class made on weather and poetry. It was so cool!The teacher must have had to scan in all the illustrations and piece it together, but each slide was narrated by the students. In my first grade class I like to make class books. For example we read, Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? and make a similar version about what we see in our school. I can only make one copy of it though. I am definitely going to steal this teacher's idea and scan in the pages to put on Voicethread. That way students can read their page they created, and have a copy of it at home that they can view with their parents. I am really looking forward to creating that!