Synesthesia Start

The following is the text of the narrated animation that begins Synesthesia Quest 2012, a virtual, online session offered through SIDLIT (the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology). The text is offered here, in case some participants do not have audio playback. For more information on SIDLIT, a free conference held annually at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS, visit www.sidlit.org.

Welcome to Synesthesia Quest 2012 (we’ll shorten the name to simply SQ12). SQ12 is an online, virtual workshop session offered as part of the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (abbreviated to SIDLIT). SQ12 will be accessible during sidelight on Thursday and Friday August second and third, 2012, and will remain open for you after the conference. 

With SQ12 we’re trying to accomplish three goals:

1. First, we want to engage all your learning senses in a SIDLIT session that does not have a set time and meeting place. You can explore between sessions, in the evenings or whenever you have access.
2. Second, we want to help you explore and interact with several desktop and web-based apps that may be useful to you. If you’re involved in education, we think you may discover some new tools to use in your classroom, whether that classroom is online or face-to-face or a hybrid of both. You’ll also have a chance to suggest apps you think other educators will find useful!
3. Finally, we want you to use SQ12 as an online forum to summarize and report key points or important ideas learned from the concurrent sessions at SIDLIT 2012. On behalf of the planning committee, we hope that you’ll learn something new from every session you attend. SQ12 gives you a place to synthesize and report on that key concept, new idea, or nugget of information you obtained…and share it with others at the conference. In fact, the closing session called “Sprint to the Finish” on Friday, August third will feature an opportunity to share your “take-aways” from each session as well as hear from others.

So let’s get started. We’ll be using a free, online app called Mentor mob. to serve as the structure and guide for your participation in SQ12. MentorMob is a tool that enables you to organize content including websites, videos or articles into a learning playlist.  While a playlist can link to websites and video already online, you can also upload several file types including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slideshows, PDF files and images.

The next three steps in this Synesthesia Quest 2012 playlist are tutorials covering “What is Mentor Mob?” a “learning playlist tour” and how to “Interact with Others.” The second tutorial will help you learn to navigate a MentorMob playlist and the third tutorial will help you understand how to comment on steps within a playlist. In case you want to add your comments to any step in the SQ12 playlist.

So now, you're ready to click the Next button at the top of the screen (on the top of the page at http://bit.ly/MwhvTK, that is) and move to step 2 in the SQ12 playlist.