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I am currently 3rd grade teacher at West Burlington Elementary School in West Burlington, Iowa. I'm in my ninth year of teaching at the same school I attended from K-12. I pursuing my Master's degree in Instructional Technology through the University of Northern Iowa and I am so excited about this adventure.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Voicethread Heard!



My experience with Voicethread the other evening was great. Voicethread is tool to post videos or photos and allow others to make comments by text, audio, or video. I was able to set up an identity and view the video posted by my professor. At first, we had problems viewing and listening to other people's comments but a quick search in the help forums and I was able to figure out that it was just a matter of changing the settings. Leaving a comment was straight forward and simple.

I can see several uses for this in my classroom. The Every Child Reads - PWIM or Picture Word Inductive Model would lend very nicely to voicethread. I could post a picture, usually related to a topic in class and students could leave their comment about the picture. They could comment about their feelings, words they see, content related ideas they think of. They could leave a text comment, creating sentences or paragraphs relating to the picture. Another use would be video clips or virtual field trips videos. The students could once again, leave their comments through audio or video and also leave text comments with sentence or paragraph creation. The teacher or students could also post their own picture and start a narrative about it and then other students could continue with the next sentence of the story and so on or the student could tell their own full story using the picture. The only problem holding me back from using this completelyat this point is that our computers are not equipped with microphones or webcams. This is something I will definifetly be bringing up to tech at school.


What are some uses for voicethread in your classrooms???


Photo: http://sillitutorial.com/voicethread_tutorial/

3 comments:

  1. Jami,
    I like your connection with The Every Child Reads PWIM or Picture Word Inductive Model, but I have no idea what they mean. My mind was just CRYING OUT for an active hyperlink to a resource where I could find out more information about these programs so that I could make more sense out of these ideas.

    Z

    (actually, I know about the Every Child Reads program but thought that it would be more dramatic if I feigned total ignorance. =-)

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  2. I agree that using Voicethread with the PWIM poster pictures would be a great interactive for kids. We do "Robust Vocabulary" in our district--and have colorful pictures so students can associate words with the picture. Voicethread could be used in a similar way with this.

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  3. (Isn't it great when Leigh "feigns total ignorance?" It IS dramatic!)

    As I was sharing the voice thread tool with my department head yesterday, we both started thinking about how it could be used in class, and - Sarah, wait for it - we both came to the vocabulary conclusion almost at the same time. Even though my initial try with VT was a little clunky, I am in no way going to avoid using it for other things.

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