Wednesday 13 November 2013

My EDC MOOC Introduction via VoiceThread #edcmooc

I'm delighted to open this blog by introducing myself to the EDC MOOC group. 

This is a mixture of starting a kind of a reflective journal, giving a brief insight into my background as well as into my reasons for signing up for this MOOC, and, mainly, identifying the goals which I hope to achieve by the end of the course. 

For the first time ever, I tried to produce a Voice Thread, which took me much longer time than I anticipated. The tool definitely has its benefits for sharing ideas and comments, but I probably need to use it more than once to get a feeling of "an easy task to do". Well, it was worth trying anyway. I now hope to get a couple of comments, at least for the sake of seeing the tool working. So, let's learn together! ;)
To add your audio, video or text comment to the Voice Thread itself, you'll need to create your free account on voicethread.com and log in.

Behind the scene: 
     I kept playing with Voice Thread for a good few hours as I boldly refused to go for the simplest option of uploading and commenting on a single image (nothing to be proud of, I believe). First, I tried out making a voice thread from Power Point slides. After spending ages recording, deleting and re-recording the audio - who knows how many audio files one needs to record to get skilled and confident enough to handle that task from the firs attempt! -. that eventually worked out, but I didn't really like the fact that there were seven comment added by me to support each slide, which also tended to switch awkwardly slowly. 
     So I then decided to play with uploading and creating a voice thread from a video. For that purpose, I converted the Power Point slides into a video (same story with the audio - I hope one day I'll smile at those memories). I knew that Voice Thread did not support every video format, and, quite predictably, that was exactly the message I received on trying to upload my creation.
     Never mind a tough game, I set up to create a screen-share video using Jing! I bet you can guess the part of the adventure with the audio recording... Well, I managed that much quicker that time (at least the rehearsals didn't get wasted) and was quite delighted with the result, especially as that was the first time I made a Jing-video. I started celebrating my successful video production just to find out that the other format was not supported by Voice Thread either. That's some bad luck... I chose to sign that off as learning from mistakes rather than allowing for any disappointment to creep in. In the end of the day, I played with more new digital tools than I did in months, and that should be ticked as relevant practical experience, right?
     Anyways, at that point I just gave up trying to get my "dream voice thread" and went for the very first one with all its downsides. :) Any conclusions to be drawn on that? Well, I'm just too tired to reflect on that bit right now.  Will try and do that later, unless you feel like giving a hand! ;)

Twitter #edcmooc comments:

 

5 comments:

  1. Wow, this is just amazing!!! You has lots of things to teach me, Liliya!

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    1. Many thanks for visiting my blog and for adding me to your circles, Lydia! :) It's also so kind of you to leave such a positive comment! I'm not sure what I could teach you as I'm very new to Coursera, MOOCs, blogging and using the tools, but if there is anything I can share with you, it'll be my pleasure! I'm also busy reading your blog, which I find to be very interesting. So, let's stay in touch! ;)

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  2. Hi Liliya! Thanks for visiting my blog and letting me know. You're my first commentor :)) Anyway I'm just leaving a comment to let you know I got your message. I received it while checking my e-mail. Yes I have 5, actually 8 MOOCs right now haha so yeah busy. But i dropped 2 of them already. I can't catch up with the requirements! Haha.. So I just download the videos and will go back to it when I have time. But Coursera is fun :) I love learning. I like to blog, writing is very therapeutic for me. I'm sure you're going to enjoy MOOCs and blogging and other stuff you'll be engaging with!

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  3. Will see more of you soon! I'll come back and check your voice thread when I'm back on catching up with my MOOCs. I need to allot a seperate time to focus on my MOOCs :)) happy learning! And nice to meet you here in the World Wide Web! :)

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    1. Many thanks for returning my message, Tony!
      Doing 8 MOOCs at the same time? Wow, that's impressive. No wonder you had to drop a couple. And yes, time management is a must there! I'd be pleased to have your comment on my first attempt at using Voice Thread, whenever your busy schedule allows!

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