PART A - Brainstorm Session

Web Conferencing Tool

Our group used Hangouts from Google Plus to brainstorm about our project.I found Google Plus Hangouts to be a useful tool for web conferencing.  It was nice to be able to get together with people across the country and talk about the project.

Advantages

The number one advantage of using hangouts is that it is a Google product.  I like having everything (email, blog, documents, Google+ for networking, voice, etc) under one username and login.  Hangouts incorporate some features from the Google family of products, like docs, right into the interface (although when I tried using docs during the hangout, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the video screen).  Hangouts also have a wide variety of other apps or plugins that we didn't really have time to get into, but will be interesting to investigate further in the future.

Disadvantages

I didn't really see many disadvantages to Hangouts.  I could do without the presenter (person talking) having a larger video in the middle of the screen, but I can see how that might be advantageous for larger groups.  I think Google+ as a platform is also still trying to figure out exactly what it is, and so are its users.  Most people I talk to, from my family to colleagues to students, aren't really sure what to make of Google+ yet, but I'm trying to use it and encourage others to do so.  As I mentioned above, it's really nice to have all these products under one login and connected together so well.

Content of Session

 Here is a recording of our full group session. All of our members were present for this session.  We chose to create an instructional presentation on using Camtasia screen recording software, which will also be our method of presenting the instruction.  Bob also used Camtasia to record the session.  Two of our members had had a bit of experience with Camtasia, but it will be a new technology for Sharon and me.  We agreed that Bob was going to start a Google doc for some preliminary storyboarding, and set up another time to meet the next weekend.

Since my previous posting on the web conferencing process, our group has made a little more headway.  Sharon and I "hung out" briefly on Saturday morning to sort of recap what we had due and where the group was.  Bob was also hard at work, and put together a shared Google presentation with the beginnings of a gameplan for how the final product might look, as well as posting all of the different parts of the project to a shared calendar, so that we can keep on top of things and distribute responsibilities.  I added to the presentation some of what Sharon and I had discussed, as well as my thoughts on an outline and distributing responsibilities.  I think the coming week will require a great deal of collaboration and planning as we  put together a storyboard and script.