Tag: VoiceThread

Join Us for VoiceThread Bootcamp with Lehman College Faculty!

We are excited to announce our next VoiceThread Bootcamp, offered from November 1-10, 2017 collaboratively to faculty from CUNY SPS and Lehman College teaching online and hybrid classes. Join us by registering here.

VoiceThread is a web-based tool that allows faculty and students to have conversations using any mix of text, audio or webcam comments. VoiceThread can be used to record a course topic introduction, create interactive online lectures, extend classroom conversations, enable students to create digital portfolios, or support language practice. Find out more about the tool on Lehman’s edtech page.

This bootcamp is learner-centered: whether you are an experienced multimedia user or new to VoiceThread, this will plant the essentials of cultivating dynamic discussions and creating vibrant content.

Here is what previous participants have said about their experience:

I had heard of Voice Thread (VT) but did not know how to take it and “work it” into my course. Guided by experienced facilitators, the group quickly formed a bond, sharing strategies and barriers with implementing VT in a wide variety of disciplines. Awesome experience!

This experience provided me with the tools that I needed to work with VoiceThread without being intimidated by it. It was a challenging experience but there was a great amount of support and guidance.

The 10-day bootcamp will run online from November 1 – 10, 2017.

There will be some activity required on most days, and during the workshop you will:

  • Acquire the skills to create VoiceThread presentations for your course.
  • Design a learner-centered VoiceThread assignment ready to be used in your course.
  • Develop a technical skill set to create engaging and interactive online learning experiences for your students.

If you’d like to join us for the bootcamp, please use this form to register.

We are looking forward to going on this adventure with you!

Antonia, Krystyna, Anick, and Olena (Lehman College)

Happy New Year with SPS Faculty Trainings


cup-coffe-laptop-Happy New Year to SPS faculty from all of us at OFDIT!

We’d like to invite you to spend part of your winter break with us — brushing up your technology skills, preparing your courses for the spring, and learning about new multimedia tools for teaching and learning.

We just announced our trainings for this month, including sessions on how to create engaging course videos or interactive VoiceThread discussions for your students.

date managementIn “Getting Ready for Spring: Preparing Your Dev Site for Course Copy,” we will walk you through the steps of how to get your course ready for a seamless course copy. As part of this training, we will also introduce Blackboard’s Date Management tool which can greatly speed up one of the most time consuming steps in preparing a course for the next semester. The tool allows to change all due or availability dates for items like assignments, tests, and discussion boards in your course at once either by setting the start date of the semester or by changing all the dates at once by a certain number of days. Join us for one of the trainings by registering here.

collaborate ultraCUNY Blackboard’s upgrade in December also included a new version of Blackboard Collaborate, a tool to set up real-time online sessions with your students. Now called Collaborate Ultra, the upgraded version offers all the same functionality but in a sleeker, more intuitive interface. For example, users can now focus on the action in the session by tucking unnecessary features away into hidden menus. Also, it now uses less bandwidth, which will mean fewer disruptions and technical problems for you and your students. Register for one of our Collaborate Ultra trainings this month where we will introduce the streamlined tool, go over the basic features of Collaborate Ultra as well as the steps to create your own session.

 

See all the trainings scheduled for this month and links to register on our Training Site.

We are looking forward to working with you!
Antonia & Krystyna

Join us for a Fall Bootcamp Adventure!

We are offering another Video & VoiceThread Bootcamp in which you can either gain new skills or sharpen old ones when creating engaging media for your teaching. If you’ve previously created course videos, maybe you’d like to integrate VoiceThread into your teaching as well? Or you let us help you sharpen your video editing skills in Screencastomatic Pro?

voicethread-logoThis bootcamp is learner-focused and we will tailor instruction to your skill level, so novices and masters alike are welcome. Whether you are a perennial or budding video-creator and VoiceThread user, this week-long workshop will plant the essentials of creating dynamic videos and cultivating vibrant content.

The bootcamp will run from Monday, November 7 – Sunday, November 13. There will be some activity required every day during that week, and by the end you will have:

  • The technical skills to create multimedia artifacts for your courses.
  • Knowledge of what makes a pedagogically effective multimedia artifact.
  • A multimedia creation ready to include in your current or future courses.
  • A plan for a second multimedia artifact to create for your courses.

Here is what previous bootcamp participants have said about their experience:

Course Video Bootcamp is well worth the time I spent doing it. I learned so much and I know that it will help me assist my students by giving them visual aids that work much better than reading a book or powerpoint. I also learned where to go should I have questions about what I learned. Great class.

This experience provided me with the tools that I needed to work with VoiceThread without being intimidated by it. It was a challenging experience but there was a great amount of support and guidance.

Video Bootcamp was a great experience! Within a week, they took me from technically-inexperienced to being able to produce my own video for use in my course! The support from the staff was great and really enabled me to learn a lot in a short period of time!

If you’d like to join us for this summer adventure, please use this form to sign up for the bootcamp.

We are looking forward to working with you in November,
Sarah & Krystyna

Welcome to the fall semester at CUNY SPS!

Dear SPS faculty,

We hope your fall semester is off to a smooth start. During the month of September and October, OFDIT is offering a different online training almost every day of the week to help you put new skills in your online teaching toolbox. There is something for everyone, whatever your schedule so please review our training calendar and read more about some of the sessions below.

We are excited to be running trainings on Turnitin, a new CUNY-wide writing assignment tool with a plagiarism checker, an easy-to-use grading interface, and a user-friendly peer-review function that students can use to review their own and their peers’ writing.

We have also added two new training topics to our growing list of one-hour online sessions: Facilitating Group Work and Monitoring Student Progress in Blackboard. Student group work encourages active engagement with course material and develops interpersonal skills that will be vital on the job market. Our group work training covers the technical details of Blackboard’s Groups tool as well as strategies for how to facilitate group work in an online environment. Monitoring student progress can be difficult in an online class. Our training on this topic introduces the tools that Blackboard provides to help you keep abreast of who is doing well in your course, who needs a little encouragement, and who might need more support.

In addition to these new topics, we have several sessions of oldies-but-goodies on offer, such as creating videos for your courses, using VoiceThread as a multimedia discussion tool, and using Blackboard to its fullest potential to make your course more effective and your life easier. Last but not least, Creating Accessible Documents for Your Course covers how to create Word, Excel and PDF files that are accessible to screen reader users and more easily understood by everyone. One of the biggest advances of the online education revolution is the potential for higher ed to be inclusive of all students; this training gives you a couple tools for following through on that promise.

To read about all of our upcoming training sessions, click here. To sign up for scheduled training sessions, fill out this form.

Wishing you a wonderful fall, and looking forward to working with you,
Antonia, Krystyna, and Sarah

Join us for Summer Bootcamp adventure!

We are offering another Video & VoiceThread Bootcamp in which you can either gain new skills or sharpen old ones when creating engaging media for your teaching. If you’ve previously created course videos, maybe you’d like to integrate VoiceThread into your teaching as well? Or you let us help you sharpen your video editing skills in Screencastomatic Pro?

This bootcamp is learner-focused and we will tailor instruction to your skill level, so novices and masters alike are welcome. Whether you are a perennial or budding video-creator and VoiceThread user, this week-long workshop will plant the essentials of creating dynamic videos and cultivating vibrant content.

The bootcamp will run from Monday, July 11 to Sunday, July 17. There will be some activity required every day during that week, and by the end of it you will have:

  •         The technical skills to create multimedia artifacts for your courses.
  •         Knowledge of what makes a pedagogically effective multimedia artifact.
  •         A multimedia creation ready to include in your current or future courses.
  •         A plan for a second multimedia artifact to create for your courses.

Here is what previous bootcamp participants have said about their experience:

Course Video Bootcamp is well worth the time I spent doing it. I learned so much and I know that it will help me assist my students by giving them visual aids that work much better than reading a book or powerpoint. I also learned where to go should I have questions about what I learned. Great class.

This experience provided me with the tools that I needed to work with VoiceThread without being intimidated by it. It was a challenging experience but there was a great amount of support and guidance.

Video Bootcamp was a great experience! Within a week, they took me from technically-inexperienced to being able to produce my own video for use in my course! The support from the staff was great and really enabled me to learn a lot in a short period of time!

If you’d like to join us for this summer adventure, please use this form to sign up for the bootcamp.

We are looking forward to working with you in July,

Sarah & Krystyna

bootcamp banner

A Bootcamp For More Interactive Teaching

Have you ever wondered how the use of multimedia tools in teaching impacts your students’ learning? A 2015 survey of educators by Kaltura shows that instructional video content improves the learning experience of students, and can particularly engage visual and auditory learners. When captioned, it has the capacity to engage “all cognitive learning styles” (p. 20).

Graph Illustrating the Impact of Video on Learning Experience
Source: “The State of Video in Education 2015. A Kaltura Report” (p. 20)

But, even if interactive multimedia has the capacity to engage students in new and exciting ways, it might seem difficult to get started, or to get acquainted with a new tool. To that end, we are offering a special spring-break Video & VoiceThread Bootcamp from April 25 through May 1.

This hands-on workshop is learner-focused and adapted to suit the needs of individual participants: If you have never made a video or created a VoiceThread before we will get you started. If you have some experience, we will show you how to sharpen your work. By the end of our week-long session all participants will develop the skills to create VoiceThread, screencasts, or webcam videos for course introductions, lectures, and discussions.

If you’d like to join us on this spring break adventure, please sign up here.

Looking forward!
Antonia, Dominique, and Sarah

February Updates: Faculty Training, VoiceThread Workshops, and a Blackboard Issue

Welcome back! We hope your spring semester is off to a great start. OFDIT is welcoming the term with new trainings, workshops offered by VoiceThread, and an announcement about Blackboard’s discussion board.

February Faculty Training. We’ve added new topics to our successful half our lunch-time training series: BrownBagBytes. This month’s sessions spotlight features that help make courses more accessible and discussions more dynamic. Our captioning training shows you how to use YouTube to add accurate captions to your videos in a few simple steps. Captions aid language learners and students with hearing impairments or organizational issues. Our training on Blackboard’s student view explains how to use the tool to streamline and simplify your course site.  In addition to our lunch series, we are also offering a full hour-long training: Introduction to VoiceThread. These show how the VoiceThread tool integrates audio and video commentary in your course discussions.

Sign up here to register for our February trainings, or use this form to schedule a one-on-one session that works around your schedule.

VoiceThread-IconWorkshops by VoiceThread. If you can’t join OFDIT, there are still opportunities to learn from workshops offered by VoiceThread this month, including sessions on incorporating VoiceThread discussions into your Language and STEM curriculum.

DB list view tree viewIssue with “Tree View” on Blackboard discussion board. You might have noticed that since January, your view of the Discussion Board keeps reverting back to List View automatically after setting it to Tree View. Blackboard is working to find a solution to this issue, but in the meantime, we’d like to pass on a helpful note one of your colleagues had drafted (thank you!) to explain the situation to his students. Please feel free to use this to make your students aware of the issue as well.

This course relies on the Blackboard Discussion Board for our class discussions. However, there is currently an issue with how we are able to view the discussion forum. Each time you enter the forum the posts appear in what is called “List View.” We need to see them in “Tree View,” however, in order to follow the threaded discussions and for you to see who has commented on your posts and for you to participate in ongoing exchanges with your classmates.  What to do? — For now each and every time you enter any forum you need to look at the upper right and click on the “Tree View” button. I do hope this will be resolved soon and that the tree view will be the default and remain the setting for all forums. Until then, thank you for your patience and understanding.

If you have questions about these or any other instructional technology please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We look forward to working with you this spring!

Antonia, Sarah, and Dominique

Teaching Tip: VoiceThread introduces threaded comments

If you have used VoiceThread in your course then you already know that it is a great tool for creating a discussion around a multimedia presentation, a PowerPoint slide show, a song, or even just a page of text. Recently VoiceThread introduced a few new ways for participants to interact with VoiceThread slides: direct replies, threaded replies, and private replies.
comments in VT

  • Direct replies allow you to click on a comment and have your reply appear directly below that comment, instead of putting your response at the very bottom of the comments bar.
  • Threaded replies are like direct replies, but they start a thread from the original comment and they are visually distinct so you can see who is participating in a particular thread of comments.
  • Private replies are recommended for individual feedback or for private “sidebar” conversations between VoiceThread participants.

See this VoiceThread video for a short overview of these new reply options.

Here’s what a thread of replies looks like:

VoiceThread threaded repliesAllowing threaded replies is not a default setting in VoiceThread. Here’s how to enable them:

  • On your VoiceThread Home screen, hover over the VoiceThread in which you want to enable threaded commenting, and select Edit in the lower left corner.
  • On the next screen, click on the blue pencil on top to edit the VoiceThread settings. In the window that opens, select the Playback Options tab and tick “Enable threaded commenting.”

The threaded reply icon will now be available when participants click on a comment.VoiceThread add threaded replyIf you have any questions about replies (or any other feature) in VoiceThread, please feel free to contact Sarah Kresh or Antonia Levy.