Voicethread

[Jady]

I was interested in finding out who has used Voicethread. Did you like it? What are some ways you have used it? Thanks Jady

[Steve Hargadon]

Hey! Great question. I think you'll find much more of a response at www.classroom20.com.

Steve

[Britt Gow]

Hi Jady,
I have done a few projects with Voicethread:
(1) uploaded photos of year 7 student posters about the water cycle and asked each student to describe the processess involved - I discovered that, although they had created their own posters, many were unable to articulate precipitation, condensation etc. correctly.
(2)Uploaded photos of a science experiment to separate a mixture of rice, sand, iron filings and salt. Students were asked to comment on each of the steps in the experiment. This was a little more successful, because slower students could follow the lead of quicker ones.
(3) Joint project on the structural, functional and behavioural adaptations of Australian and American animals. (work in progress).
I believe this tool has great potential - students should have their own avatars (logos) if they are going to be public documents and they often spend too long fiddling with these - creating their own identities. Younger students may need assistance in setting up microphones correctly, although they can also use text.
I am looking forward to spicing up my maths lessons with it too - the drawing tool will be helpful for students to identify specific angles and sides (for example, "the hypotenuse is here", "this is an acute angle" etc.)
Have fun and let me know if you have a great Voicethread lesson to share!

[Or-Tal Kiriati]

hi!
Are these public? Can we see them??

[Britt Gow]

Hi Jady,
These are the year 7 science Voicethreads I have tried out:
Water cycle drawings
I think you can go to that one and then "see others by this author" to find "Separating Mixtures" and "Australian Animals".
It doesn't seem to work as well with multiple windows open.
I hope you like them.

[Or-Tal Kiriati]

It's amazing!! So exciting!

[Amanda]

My students created an American History timeline. Originally, we tried to do it to scale - they decided on 2 inches=1 year. However, the finished timeline was too long to display anywhere. So, we cut the pictures apart and they read their information on a voice thread. They mentioned how many years had passed since the previous screen so this kept the importance of their scale in place. It was a really great use of the technology and they loved hearing their voices.

[Amy Kenyon]

Amanda-

Can you share the link to the VoiceThread you created? I would love to see it, particularly since our class VoiceThread was also on American History.

[Ellen]

We've been using Voicethread for a few months. My Kindergarten students wrote, illustrated and recorded list poems, first graders wrote, illustrated and recorded poems based on "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown, my fourth graders uploaded their animations and my fifth graders created a Voicethread for Women's History Month. I love Voicethread! I am the account holder and all my students have created avatars and are listed as Identities on my account. You can link to our Voicethreads through our blog, ps233techteacher.edublogs.org

Please leave us a comment if you visit our Voicethreads. The kids love to get feedback!

[Kate Fanelli]

Where do you go to make avatars? I'm thinking about using Voicethreads this year, but confidentiality is a HUGE issue for us. We are a special education day treatment center and nothing identifying our students as special ed is allowed out of the building. Even though Voicethreads for educators is closed, if I'm going to sell this to my administration we need to be super careful.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Kate

[Amy Kenyon]

Kate-

My students drew pictures of themselves and we scanned them in, but you can also just use random photos or drawings of things like frogs, airplanes, flowers, etc.

Does that help?

Amy

[Kate Fanelli]

OK Amy, I have another question, if you don't mind. Do you have an educator account?

I just want to make sure I get how this works: you are the administrator. You are associated with your class. The kids don't have email addresses, so you just sign them up from a list that you make. They have logins and passwords so they can only see their own creations. Unless they had access to their classmates' logins, they wouldn't be able to share their stuff or comment on each other's stuff, right?

As the teacher, I would share my voicethreads with everybody and they pretty much have open access to the ones that I make, right? They comment and I moderate the comments.

Thanks for your help. I won't keep pestering you for help.

Kate

[Kate Fanelli]

Sorry, I thought of another question.

With teacher comment moderation, do you moderate just the comments sent to your own creations, or can you also moderate student to student comments?

And is your group closed to just your own classroom, or is it closed to the whole ed.voicethread community?

Kate