Group Leadership Project

For the group leadership project I was asked to collaborate with three other classmates to create a professional development tutorial on a technology of our choice.  During part A of the project I "met" with my group members on Vyew to discuss possible technologies to teach and the logistics of the project.  Our group decided to teach about the uses of Blogger by creating a tutorial using Camtasia.  During part B our group continued to collaborate and created a storyboard and script for our presentation.  We chose to use google presentation to create our storyboard and script.  Check out the tutorial below! 

What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial?  Why?

Our group chose to use Camtasia to deliver the tutorial.  As a learner I prefer to see a step-by-step tutorial of what needs to be learned.  This allows the viewer to pause and review areas of the tutorial they would like to see again.  I thought the use of Camtasia would allow our group to not only verbalize, but also show each part of how to use Blogger effectively.  

What did you learn during the development process of the final product?
I found it to be very easy to communicate and collaborate with a group solely through the use of technology and the internet.  I learned a lot about Camtasia, and had to do quite a bit of troubleshooting to figure out how to put all the pieces together to make our final product.  I also found that using technology and creating deadlines allows everyone to work at their own pace and complete the assignment when it is convenient for them.  This is a great feature of using online collaboration tools such as google docs. 

What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?

I thought our group worked together very well.  I offered to put all the pieces of Camtasia together and edit the final project.  This proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated.  I own a Mac computer, and the version of Camtasia on a Mac is completely different than the PC version.  When my group members tried to send me their files they were not compatible with the Camtasia version I had.  After many different attempts to get their files and a lot of troubleshooting, I finally found a solution!  I asked my group members to share their portion on screencast.  Then I logged onto their screencast account and downloaded the mp4 to my computer.  Then I was able to import the media into my Camtasia account.  That being said during my next group project I will do more research to make sure that all technologies jive, so I can avoid a headache at the last minute.  I enjoyed using Camtasia and would definitely use it again. I found it to be very user-friendly, and after watching a few tutorials the editing process it was very easy to edit as well.