Major Trends in Distance Education (Future) - Group 4

The topic that our group was given to research and present on using VoiceThread was "What are the Major Trends (the future) in Distance Education?".

Group 4 consisted of Sobia Khan, John Mrozek, Marlene Wark, and me as group leader.  Our final presentation posted to VoiceThread can be found here: Group 4: Future Trends in Distance Education

With a very busy week ahead for all of the group members, we started our initial discussion on email to begin to assign our sections and decide which of the many trends in distance education each of us would cover. Email was the easiest way to begin since we only had each other's email addresses and need to at least get the ball rolling.

Marlene was kind enough to host an online GoToMeeting session for our group on Friday evening so we could all meet, virtually, and begin to sort out some of the final details of our individually-developed presentations.  We all agreed that once all of the presentations were completed, they would send them to me and I would organize them into the sections based on the best logical flow.

We had to get somewhat creative because Sobia was in Florida, so we had her on speaker phone while the online meeting was taking place so she, too, could participate.  On Saturday, all 3 team members sent their individual presentations to me and I combined them and posted them to VoiceThread to begin the recording process.

By Sunday evening, after juggling work, triathlons, pool parties, and regular weekend chores, our team successfully added recordings to all of our slides and the presentation was complete!

This process was simple because I had used VT before in a previous course and was comfortable with uploading the presentation and commenting on my slides. There are still certain aspects of VoiceThread that I don't like, primarily the inability to delete/add a slide once it is uploaded.  This isn't huge if it is only one presenter, but when you add 3 more you can't simply re-upload a presentation and start over.  Secondly, I don't like the fact that regardless of how clear your graphics are in PowerPoint, some get distorted when it saves it in VT.  However, I believe that our presentation looked exceptionally well.

I believe that I could use VoiceThread in my professional life because we have a disconnect between our learners and our office.  By presenting to the residents and fellows on an enduring presentation that they can see and hear me speak on, they are able to visit the information as often as they like and comment as if we were in a face to face presentation.  I have not considered it in the past, but as our program numbers continue to grow, it would be beneficial to have this option available.

Thanks, team, we put a phenomenal presentation together!