Presenting content in a collaborative way
Community Review for VoiceThread
My Take
VoiceThread has become an integral part of my 8th grade USHistory course because it allows me to post online lessons that are interactive. Both students and teachers can post responses via keyboard (text), phone (audio), microphone (audio), or audio/video (webcam). As with any tool, you will learn more tricks once you are accustomed to the format and experiment.
How I Use It
I have built an online library of content in my course and post it on my class website. Therefore, students have access to my course content 24/7. I try and keep each VoiceThread to a 5-10 minute time frame. Here is what you need to do: 1) Write your script. Keep it simple. Focus on the major issues/concepts. 2) Organize your ideas into "chunks" and collect images best representing these "chunks", 3) Build a slideshow (PowerPoint?) of your images and save it in pdf format. 4) Create a VoiceThread and import your pdf file. 5) Record yourself talking (or reading script) via webcam. 6) Post your VoiceThread on a webpage or share via link. 7) Your permissions will determine who can participate in the VoiceThread. 8) I recommend setting it so that each day you receive notifications of new responses... it lets you go back and respond to student remarks/questions.