Voice Thread - A Unique Tool

The Voice Thread site has very strong possibilities as a media sharing site. The site creators have certainly worked hard to make the technology work well and fall to the background. Users are freed to focus on ideas and thinking creatively.

Beyond ease of use, Voice Thread has thought a lot about educators. The launch of Ed.VoiceThread takes care of some of the biggest concerns with student privacy and safety. It has given teachers an area to try ideas with students without concerns about inappropriate content. Somehow, the tone of the site is constructive, child friendly and thriving with real ideas.

Of course, the unique feature of Voice Thread is the somewhat non-linear structure of a presentation. The ability of several narrators to post to an image or video in a cluster around it is wonderful. Skipping to a particular voice clip or to a different slide is very liberating when you're used to wading through entire video clips.

Strong examples of the different ways to use Voice Thread can easily be found. The TeachWeb2 site has a nice list of examples. Possibilities include digital storytelling, showing a dissection, reflecting on a historical photo, summarizing field trip facts, using a writing prompt and explaining art techniques.

The TechKnow Blog has more thoughts and suggestions here including narrating a lab report or math solution, reading poetry to pictures and adding multiple language comments.

One straightforward, but successful presentation, Tall Tales, can be seen here. The students are well prepared and their voice clips show an enthusiasm for the subject. The avatars that they use are great.

A more student driven example, Owl Pellets, is linked here. It is a good example of how creating narration can cause a student to think more deeply about a project. It is also an activity that some students may not have an opportunity to try.

What Makes a Hero? explores the themes of heroism, fame and the ordinary. A lot of the comments are text, but stand out for their thoughtfulness.

Of course, using a great tool does not ensure that students automatically benefit. It doesn't ensure that the final product reached its potential. Wesley Fryer's Moving at the speed of Creativity site offers an exemplary Voice Thread presentation and some advice. Besides basic safety and privacy issues, he touches on the idea that a Voice Thread will be most effective when multiple voices are included. This avoids the "narrated PowerPoint" effect. Fryer strongly recommends allowing open commenting to provide all of the interaction possible.

When browsing through Voice Threads, it becomes clear that there are a few other things to watch for. I would suggest that teachers avoid having a student post some work and simply collect comment after comment stating how nice their picture is. This really doesn't take the student anywhere new. In fact, it seems that students need to be primed in giving quality comments, and the teacher can make a big difference by modeling this for students.

Voice Thread is partly about using our voice. It may be useful to have students listen to themselves on a tape recorder or an audio program to gain confidence and find "their voice". Once they gain some awareness of how they can control their volume and intonation, their spoken comments will be much stronger.

Finally, 25 Tools has gathered a set of instructions for most of the technical things that teachers might need to do while using Voice Thread.

posted by John Lobe @ 9:06 PM