A thread of voices

Conversations in the cloud

Shouts VoiceThread out loud.

So easy and fun,
Students young and old can take it for a run!

VoiceThread is a really neat online application. After uploading some images, students can add their comments/narration using text, voiceover or video. Some of the real power in VoiceThread comes in the ability of students to comment and interact with the VoiceThread; this, of course, is the power of many web applications (Richardson, 2010).

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The flexibility of VoiceThread allows it to be used with the whole class, in small groups or independently and across all curricular areas (Brunvand & Byrd, 2011). Additionally, "VoiceThread enables teachers to capitalize on student learning strengths and preferred learning modalities by encouraging active participation in the learning process" (Brunvand & Byrd, 2011, p. 33). Brunvand and Byrd (2011) found that VoiceThread allowed at-risk students
and students with disabilities to achieve greater success by focussing on individual strengths.

Luke Rodesiler (2010) suggests the following uses for VoiceThread:

• deconstructing images, advertisements and other print texts
• analyzing moving images
• composing digital stories
• revising and reflecting

The possibilities are really endless. VoiceThread is a fun and easy platform that I am will be using with our Grade 3 students soon!

Brunvand, S. & Byrd, S. (2011). Using VoiceThread to promote learning engagement and success for all students. Teaching Exceptional Children, 43(4), 28-37.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

Rodesiler, L. (2010). Voices in action: The potential of VoiceThread in the media classroom. Screen Education, 59, (72-74).

A spider story

Here you go spidey, I made this for you.

A Voicethread, you see, I tried something new.

Pictures and talking, it is so much fun!

You can add comments, I am not the only one.

So here is the ever so simple Voicethread that I made.

How to use your voice

So what can you do with a class and your voice?

Can the students do it? Do they have a choice?

There are many fun thing to create with Voicethread,

Images, videos and comments of what you said.

Since I can't seem to get into Voicethread tonight, I thought I would explore some resources looking at how Voicethread can be used in education. Here are some of the things I came across:

• there is a great wiki called Voicethread 4 Education full of tons of resources
• I really like the ideas in this Google presentation

• some of the good ideas:
• creating one account for the class and different identities for each student; students can they respond/comment on something you have posted
• making up a story to go with pictures
• displaying student art work
• recording reflections
• documenting science 
• the wiki also has pages specific to various grades with other lesson ideas such as:
• creating a class "book" Voicethread with each student's artwork and accompanying comment as a page
• book reviews
• the wiki definitely has many good ideas

Some other things I noted:

• the Voicethreads can take quite a long time to load onto a page and the video/audio comments can also take a while to load; would this be frustrating for students?

I found this good article on Voicethreads at Edutopia: VoiceThread extends the classroom with interactive multimedia albums

Bill Ferriter has a good handout for commenting on Voicethreads on his blog The Tempered Radical in the post Using Voicethread for collaborative thought . . . 

That's it for now. 

Voicethread

A thread for your voice? Just what does that mean?

Is it like a web that shows where you've been?

A Voicethread, my friend, is a new way to show

All that you've learned to share with those you know.

I thought it was time to explore Voicethread and see how it works. One of the aspects that really interests me in terms of using Voicethread in a classroom, is the opportunity for students to present information by talking. This will be easier for some of the younger children who have not yet learned how to write and spell. It is also a benefit for students with various learning difficulties. This also makes it easy to present a project in French!

Hmmm . . . strange, but Voicethread doesn't want to load for me tonight. I only see a blank white page. I wonder if this happens often?

I will write about my experiences and may need to fill in some details later. 

After I signed into Voicethread, I was offered the opportunity to learn how to use it with some videos. However, I prefer to just jump in and play around with an application, discovering it for myself. So that is what I did.

I was able to easily upload some pictures from my computer and change the order of them by dragging them around. I could give the images titles as well. I made an identity for myself and my son (still home sick) but could not figure out how to comment on specific images. This actually took me quite a while to figure out! I watched several different help videos that did not really help and then figured it out by chance. It turns out you just put together all the images, with titles and then publish the Voicethread. You then go through the project and can add comments (voice, written or even drawing on the image) at the photos as you wish. So, it was actually very simple once I got past that small glitch!

If I ever get into Voicethread again, I will post what I did!