Using VoiceThread in a PK– 2 Classroom
T hink about walking through an elementary school where pictures and projects line the
halls like wallpaper. While this may
be pretty, visitors can only observe the
work and cannot provide feedback to
students, teachers, and administrators.
Now, imagine those pictures and
projects posted on the internet, where
viewers could offer dynamic feedback
using audio, video, and text. Sounds a
lot better than a stagnant wall display,
right?
Voice Thread is a web 2.0 tool that
allows users to upload images and
video into a slideshow for presentation. Parents, teachers, and peers can
comment on student work using a
microphone, a video camera, a keyboard, or a doodle pen.
Voice Thread offers special accounts
for educators with various membership tiers within its educator account
hierarchy. Given the tight budgets at
many school districts, most teachers
will want to start with a free account,
which allows the user to create three
Voice Thread presentations, each containing up to 50 slides at a time. The
account allows the teacher to be the
main user and the students to use the
account as multiple identities. This
means that students don’t have to log
in with an email address. Teachers can
provide links to the intended audience
and monitor comments to ensure that
the online space is safe and secure.
I find Voice Thread especially useful
for emerging readers and writers in
grades PK– 2, mainly because its emphasis on pictures and sounds makes
it accessible to beginning readers.
Voice Thread has simple control
buttons that use images instead of
words. It also allows students to
Art
Subject
Math
Way to Use Voice Thread
Language Arts
Social Studies
Science
Assessment
Students can write stories and have another student illustrate
them. Then, the illustrator explains why he or she created
the illustration in a certain way, using the text as the original
springboard.
A teacher could also use Voice Thread for a novel study. A
teacher might upload pictures of pages from a picture book
that the students read in class. Students would then post
a comment to the pages that illustrate a particular literary
element, such as setting, or a grammatical skill, such as
pronoun usage.
Students can upload pictures of charts and graphs to
Voice Thread. Students can come up with one question for
each chart and graph and see if their parents can answer
the questions when they go home.
The teacher can post pictures of students completing a
science experiment. Students have to comment on each
picture, explaining what is happening in the picture using at
least three science words.
Students can take pictures of class art and then have the
student artists record themselves explaining their pieces and
commenting on other pieces.
Teachers could put a picture of a concept in Voice Thread and
see if students can verbally explain it (within the guidelines
that you create).
create purposeful verbal responses
through an approved recording feature, which lets students try again if
they don’t like the way the recording
sounds. These features lead to increased confidence in using computers and the internet, and they prepare
students for reflection and revision as
a part of the creative process.
Teachers can use Voice Thread as
a way to empower students to dis-
cuss ideas in the classroom. Unlike
traditional class discussions, where
students are spread around the room
in a more teacher-centered atmo-
sphere, Voice Thread engages students
in a discussion using multiple media.
At any given point, they are listening,
viewing, or speaking about the con-
tent. Because of the user-guided in-
terface, students are in control of their
experience.
