This Week's Tip: Explore Voice Thread
Now I'm going to admit straight up that I am brand new to this. I have heard about other people using Voice Thread, but have only just begun to dabble with it myself and am yet to explore it with my students. The reason I am writing about it today is that I can see such great potential for it and already have plans for what I will do with it this year.
Voice Thread allows you to take one or more images and upload them in a sequence and then record written, audio or video comments. They have special subscriptions for classes and schools. I'm going to test out the Free K-12 Educators one first and if I find my students wanting to dig into it more themselves I will consider a class subscription.
Initially I am going to use Voice Thread with my Year 4 students to create discussion around newspaper articles. I am going to scan in a newspaper article each day (fingers crossed!) and upload it to Voice Thread. Then I will invite my students to comment on the article using deBono's six thinking hats. I have created identities for the different hats, so students can comment from these different identities. See my example below (please be kind - I put it together quickly and it's for your benefit only!)
I'm yet to determine what we will do with the Voice Threads when they're finished. I'll probably post them on our class blog (still being created) and/or school website or "My Classes" page. They are very easy to embed (as seen above) and you can choose whether or not you want people to be able to add comments to the thread.
Sharon Betts provides a great explanation of Voice Thread in her session at the K12 Online Conference. This is really worth watching as she gives some great examples for how it can be used with students of different ages. Sharon also walks you through the steps for getting started with Voice Thread.
Teacher Tube also has some videos to demonstrate how to use Voice Thread. Here's a good one where kids walk you through the steps. This would be particularly good for students to use as a tutorial.
How have you used Voice Thread? What possible uses can you see for it?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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I have used voicethread to do several things. I had a student take a state assessment on one. I had some students create oral presentations. I even used one to create a kind of congratulations recording.
ReplyDeleteMr. C
I started using Voice Thread since September last year(2008). I used them to recorded the stories that the children had written. They read their stories into the Thread. Sometimes it could be just a few sentences from their stories.
ReplyDeleteIn my last Thread, its all about what they would be doing in the school holidays.
Jenny.
ps. have a look at my class blog. Little voices, Little scholars.
Hi Penny,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! I would never have thought of using newspaper articles and deBono's thinking hats.
Do you mind if I borrow your idea to show staff and hopefully get some to try it?