VoiceThread – About – Identities via kwout

VoiceThread is an interactive environment that facilitates collaboration on creating dynamic slideshows by allowing users to post comments, which are publicly viewable if needed, in a variety of formats including text, audio and video all delivered from either a computer or phone. In addition to this it allows viewers to comment by drawing pictures directly on the slides.

Although that is a fairly good shot at describing VoiceThread they do a much better job of it by showing what it can do which you can see here.( http://voicethread.com/#q.b409.i848804 and here http://voicethread.com/about/).

My description of VoiceThread is drastically condensed but it is a good base. When you watch a VoiceThread you are faced with a slide and pictures all along the sides, these pictures are the comments that people have left in either text, audio or video, a timeline plays along the bottom and is segmented for each person who left a comment. If you want you can skip all the comments and go to the next slide by clicking the large arrow on the bottom right.

So how could you use VoiceThread in Education? Well this is one of those tools that could be used for so many different purposes that I won’t touch on even a fraction of what can be done but I will try so here we go:

• Put up an image of a technical word (used in medicine perhaps) that needs to be pronounced correctly. Leave your own audio comment so they know how to pronounce it and have your students leave audio comments on that slide. It not only reinforces how to say it but they hear how the other students pronounce it as well.
• Students could use it as a way of collaborating on large projects and could be used as a way of documenting the process to show they actually did the work.
• Use it as a way of visual storytelling.
  Use it for creative writing exercises, post a series of pictures and have students commutatively create the story by having each person add to what the last person wrote.
• Use it as a forum for debate
• Use it for tutorials
• Use it to get to know your class

If you are interested in more I suggest you go to VoiceThread and browse ( http://voicethread.com/#q ) some of the ones that have already been created. Many of them are very creatively using the tool to fill gaps and really engage students in an open and non-threatening dialog.

One downside to VoiceThread is that for a student to use it they do need to have an account and although it is free it is another step they will need to go through to be able to use it.