Getting started with Voxer (or any other new technology)

Be brave, be bold

Have you guys heard of Voxer? I have, but I had never actually dug into it until last night. I saw this tweet, from @sarahdateechur (who is amazing, and I know you follow her on twitter because AMAZING):

Now, I love gamification. I wouldn’t make games if I didn’t. And I’d heard of Voxer before, and was curious how it worked. But you know, it’s a new technology and I didn’t really know how it worked, so I’d been putting off using it. But Sarah’s one of those folks who, you meet them and you just immediately feel comfortable talking with them and listening to their advice (she has a YouTube channel full of goodness, seriously go follow that as well, it’s chock-full of amazing stuff. She puts out a video, I watch it. Like, first in line.) so while I did not have a Voxer account, I figured now was as good a time as any, and I launched myself at this new technology.

It’s good to have friends

I watched the video, then signed up for an account. Then I got back on twitter.

 

See what I did there? The Voxer UI, I am going to say, is not the friendliest I’ve seen, but I got on there anyway and kind of poked at it and tried to figure out what all the buttons did. I changed my profile picture (so important!). I scooted around until I was fairly confident I’d found my username (it’s ahoman888, btw. A full minute-plus to figure that out.) and then sent it to Sarah, who promptly Voxer’d me.

Now, let’s pause here for a moment

Voxer is a voice chat app. You press the talking button on your iPad mini, record your message, and it shares that sound with your intended recipients. Sarah kindly added me to the GEG DC Metro Area, Strictly Gamification and Gamifying Professional Learning chats. But that’s not what’s important right now.

My point (and I do have one)

I’m still kind of ….mildly puzzled by Voxer. I don’t quite get it. I should be… hearing other folks talking at me about gamification? Or I should be hearing more Sarah? Or I should be asking questions?

All these questions are both good and immaterial.

They’re good because I reside firmly in the camp of Asking Questions Is Always Awesome and I’ll just straight-up fight you if you think questions are ever inappropriate. But my questions are also immaterial because the real point here is that, as educators, we have the opportunity to model fearlessness in the face of new technology. We have all these digital cliff-faces, just over there, and our PLNs are like wingsuits, if you will. When you’ve got your PLN with you, it’s really no big thing to take a running jump over the edge and

SOAR.

If you’re on Voxer and you want to connect, my username is audreyhoman888. If you’re not on Voxer but you’re on another cool platform/tool you think I should be aware of, hit me up and let me know. Tweet at me. Use the contact form on this blog. Send up smoke signals.

I’ll meet you out there.