VoiceThread is a great presentation tool that allows you to provide narration (in the form of comments) to accompany a slide show. Imagine taking a simple PowerPoint presentation and recording your presentation once and having it available for your students any time they are on-line. Students can leave responses or questions in the form of comments, either typed or recorded, to further the discussion. There’s even a “doodle” option, which allows you to highlight the section of the slide you’re referencing. The writing fades over time, allowing you to move on to another point without cluttering each slide with too many notes.
This week I am presenting 2 workshops with my colleague, Mrs. Mary Christine Dion, one for faculty at our high school and a second at the MassCUE Conference in Foxboro, Massachusetts. We’ll be sharing this amazing tool with our colleagues and offering some ideas that we’ve tried with our own classes. We’ll also be offering a few tips to help avoid issues (as with all tools, VoiceThread is not perfect).
Project ideas and samples
My Latin 1 class recently completed a Latin Mottos project. Students searched for mottos in Latin that still are in use today. They found a single image that best showed the message of the motto. They uploaded the slideshow to VoiceThread and recorded themselves reading the Latin mottos. In addition to identifying uses of Latin in the modern world, students are demonstrating their mastery of Latin pronunciation.
Latin Mottos about Death and Life
My Latin Studies classes are just now completing a storytelling project. Students were required to write a short story in Latin demonstrating their understanding of specific grammatical concepts (specifically, use/forms of certain noun cases and agreement with verbs and adjectives). They created a slideshow incorporating the text of their story on with images to help tell the story. They are now recording themselves reading the stories with correct Latin pronunciation.
I created a similar story, this time with the assistance of my 3 and 5 year old daughters. The girls sat in my lap one afternoon and helped me write a story slideshow using SMART Notebook. I uploaded the slideshow to VoiceThread. Then my older daughter read the story aloud. She’s just starting to read, so she was very proud that she could read the whole thing. Younger students could create their own stories, or each student could create a single page. Illustrations could be scanned in and the students could narrate or describe their pictures. VoiceThread has an educator option, which helps provide a safe and secure platform for students of all ages.
Mrs. Dion’s Spanish students practice describing themselves. They brought in pictures of themselves as babies and Mrs. Dion created the slideshow for the class. All the students wrote a descriptions of themselves in Spanish without sharing their names. Classmates then commented on each slide, guessing who was in the picture based on the description. In a similar activity, each student created an autobiography slideshow. They shared pictures and wrote about their life in Spanish. Students then uploaded their presentation and recorded their autobiography in the target language.
In another Spanish lesson, Mrs. Dion’s students each created a complete VoiceThread presentation. In a lesson on body parts and illnesses, students had to talk about how to get into shape. The students were instructed to describe what happened during a full week of trying new fitness routines: each day they suffered another injury to some part of their body. By the end of the week, the students were completely incapacitated! Students took their own photographs and narrated their mishaps, all in Spanish.
Another Spanish teacher, Mr. Michael Springer, is using VoiceThread with his upper level Spanish students to investigate Spanish art history. Students were to find an image of a piece of art and commented on their slide in Spanish. This is a good example of an activity that transfers well to any subject that would require commenting on an image or picture – art history, geography, geometry, history, and biology all come to mind as subjects where this activity would be meaningful. At The Professional Learner Profe Springer shares his Lessons from a VoiceThread Project.
Our Advanced Placement teachers were discussing the need to encourage more conversations in the target languages. On the Spanish AP exam, students are required to listen to a short conversation and respond. We brainstormed the following activity. Students find an image that will inspire conversation (e.g. someone looking at a broken window, someone looking over a cliff). Two students are assigned the picture and must develop a conversation inspired by the image. The images are uploaded to VoiceThread and the teams record their conversation as comments. The rest of the class then listens to the other conversations and responds to what they’ve heard by recording their own comments. This recreates the activity on the AP test while giving the students creative in-put to how they develop the conversations.
But VoiceThread is not only for Foreign Language teachers. Browse the VoiceThread site and you will find projects created for Art History, Language Arts, Science, Math, Biology. Remember that there are educator accounts available for teachers which allow teachers of all grade levels to take advantage of this great tool while respecting the privacy of their students.
Tom Barrett has created a great resource, 17 Useful Ways to Use VoiceThread in the Classroom. Check out his ideas and be sure to send him ideas that you develop for your own classes.
MindMeister has a VoiceThread in Education mind map that offers suggestions for how to use VoiceThread for class projects and more.
Please visit TeacherTech 21st Century, a wiki where we share our presentation from the MassCUE Conference.
UPDATE:
One excellent result of attending workshops such as MassCUE is meeting people who use the same tools and hearing what they do with their students. I just met Mr. Greg Kulowiec from Plymouth High School and The History 2.0 Classroom. He presented on VoiceThread at the MassCUE Conference in 2008; he suggested I search for his projects and his students’ work. Here are some examples of what he does:
U.S. History Honors class Impressions of Slavery
U.S. History Honors Should Jackson be on the $20
He also made a great (and perhaps obvious) suggestion that I search for samples in other subjects.
For Math:
The Math Lessons for 9-25-08 by Ms. Colville
For Science (short but effective):
The Carbon Cycle (4th Period) by Mary Ellsworth
Thanks for the mention and good luck in your presentation!