Friday, March 19, 2010

Thing Fourteen: Voicethead

I absolutely love Voicethread, and I have been using it since this time last year. There are endless possibilities with Voicethread. The most important thing about Voicethead is that it is safe. Students can create and collaborate with other students anywhere in the world at any time. Voicethread is basically digital storytelling in a very easy format.

It is a secure place to upload documents, presentations, videos, images... for the objective of collaboration. I have used it for favorite poems during April, (poetry month)book reviews, solving math problems, group work for a class project... With the poems, my students illustrated what they thought would be a good representation of the poem. We then exported their illustrations into a jpeg and uploaded them onto Voicethread. They then recited their poem and peers, parents, other teachers... made comments. Parents and grandparents can be a part of the classroom by viewing their child/grandchild's online work and make comments. Voicethread allows students who may not like to participate in class discussion feel more comfortable with sharing their ideas. The different commenting styles allow students to participate in the discussion in whatever manner they are most comfortable.

I have used Voicethreading for two specific purposes in my class so far. We first used Voicethreading as a book review. This was a book that I read to my class as a “read aloud.” The title of the book was Gabriel’s Horses. I have also used it specifically for poetry. I have included the two voicethreads. I encourage anyone to try it. The kids love it, and it gets them excited about learning.

2 comments:

  1. These are great examples of using Voicethread. I'm glad you mentioned how this tool can be set up to be used with just the people you want to use it. That's good for everyone to know.

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  2. I love how you use VoiceThread as a connection to home - parents and grandparents.

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