Voicethread Presence on Campus
In the last issue of Bits and Bytes, we highlighted the Internet application Voicethread. Voicethread is a simple way to assemble voice, images and video together and share a story with the world. This relatively new application has recently made an appearance in several areas of campus. In the Lower School, Betsy Anderson had her students create a Voicethread presentation that served as a culmination of a project her first graders did on famous people.
The beauty of this presentation is that it pulled together the students artistic representation of their famous person with a short research story about the person, which they also read. This makes this type of project a powerful portfolio tool where students can highlight their work while teachers collect meaningful authentic alternative assessments. Voicethread projects are now popping up throughout the Lower School with new projects across the entire first grade and a project that is nearing completion in Heather O’Toole’s second grade class.
Take a moment to learn about some of the famous people the first grade studied this year.
Voicethread has also been used by Mary Tapia with her French and Spanish students. You can view samples of their programs below:
Finally, students are now starting to use Voicethread on their own as a personal choice for creating a presentation for other classes they are taking. This serves as a testament of the simplicity of using the tool. The simplicity in the application removes the complexity of technology freeing the students up to spend more time reflecting on the topic while providing an avenue for creative expression.
You can set up your own Voicethread account at http://voicethread.com. What can you do with Voicethreads? What can your students create? I invite you to explore the possibilities.
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