CivieBlog

I’ve just been looking at a really interesting on line tool called Voicethread.

What's Voicethread?
Voice thread enables users to create online presentations using their own images. It also allows the creator to add audio or written text to the images and give access to other people to leave audio or text comments on the presentation. This is a really nice way of creating presentations that can interact and create dialogue with an online audience.

Here’s a couple that I’ve created. I decided that I wanted to use this tool for a class of students I teach in Second Life. I wanted them to explore various islands and take snapshots of what they found. They would then be able to upload these to Voicethread and record audio reports, which they could then share with the class and leave comments on. I thought this would be a good way to get them to really concentrate on producing a high quality fine tuned finished product, as they would know that there was and audience for these presentations.

I created these two presentations of examples of what I wanted them to do.

• Example 1 This one is a tour of Edunation II in Second Life.
• Example 2 This one is a visit to Vassar Island and you’ll see that a few people have already left comments.

How do I use it?
In order to help them understand how to use the tool I also created this movie tutorial.

• Watch tutorial (800k Flash)
• Watch tutorial (3.14Mb wmv)
  

I really think that this is a remarkable tool. It’s been specially created for educators and so it has some really nice features.

How can I use it with my students?
Here’s a few other things I think you could get students to do which would help to develop their language abilities.

• Ask then to upload some images of things with personal significance and create a kind of online show and tell.
• Get students to create and tell a story using pictures. If they have access to digital cameras, you could get the students to work in pairs or small groups to produce a story together.
• Upload two images and ask students to record what they think is the connection between the two images
• Upload images for students to describe, such as rooms or people etc.
• Upload images of people speaking and ask students to add a dialogue. They could also add text bubbles of what they think the people are thinking
• Ask students to research a member of their family then upload an image of the person and tell about them.
• Get students to upload pictures from around their town and create a sort of interactive tourist guide
• Upload some images of graphs and statistics and see if students can describe them appropriately
• Upload some images with incorrect descriptions and see if they can spot and correct the errors

This page is also well worth looking at: http://voicethread.com/classroom.php
It has some user guides which you can download and also shows you how to set up identities for your kids so they don’t have to disclose any personal information.

I hope you find this useful and do let me know how you use it.
Best
Nik