Meet the Staff: Stephen

The next staff member I want to introduce you to is one of the curriculum designers, Stephen. Stephen is responsible for creating the screencasts (the video tutorials you’ve seen in our Microsoft Office lessons) and helping design the educational content of the tutorials. It is his voice you hear in the video and he’s the one moving the mouse to show you around the software programs.

What led you to working at GCFLearnFree.org?

“I had classroom teaching experience, and I had been a radio host on a college station for a few years, so that naturally led to screencasting. I’m also an audio geek, and I’ve been able to use those skills to edit the audio in our Reading Program.”

What project are you most proud of while working here?

“Probably Office 2010. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access are all pretty complex programs, but we wanted to create lessons and videos that would be easy to understand. Although it was a lot of work, I think everybody enjoyed the challenge. In the process, we also learned a lot of things we didn’t know about Office.”

What is your favorite thing about working at GCFLearnFree.org?

“Great coworkers! The people in our office have a wide variety of skills, and everyone is really committed to what they do.”

What’s one thing you wish people knew about GCFLearnFree.org?

“I wish everybody knew just how many different tutorials we have. If you go to http://www.gcflearnfree.org/topics, you can see a complete list – you’ll have to scroll down to see all of them! I think anybody in the world can learn something from our site.”

What is your favorite pop culture series?

“Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I’m always amazed at how imaginative and hilarious it is. All of the Monty Python movies are great, too.”

I’m completely surprised that Stephen didn’t mention his interest in fish OR astronomy once during his interview. We’ve had very detailed conversations in our communal area discussing both of these topics. I guess we’ll just have to get him to do another interview later!