Dig Deep into the Mainstays--Creative Sites

The creative site I chose is Voicethread because this is the one I’ve used once in the past a long time ago. A VoiceThread is a great way for students to share ideas and concepts, and then respond to each other. My 7th grade students research three different careers in Web 2.0 Career Concepts. They then have to explain which career is best for them based on what they learned and the connection to their self analysis. I usually have them complete a short summary of their findings and present this information in a text box in a Glogster. I thought it might be a good idea to replace the textbox with a VoiceThread, so I tested this with a few students to see how it would work--click here to see the start of our thread. The kids really loved it, however, I realized very quickly that it needed some more preparation time on my part. The free account does not allow students to add their own slides, so this is something I had to set up ahead of time. I also encountered some microphone issues. But once I added slides for each student, the kids really enjoyed recording their voices. At the end of class they told me how much fun it was. I have to say, I was thrilled over their excitement for such a simple concept. We ran out of time, but they are looking forward to commenting on each others' work next week. I love the collaborative component of the VoiceThread, and will have the kids now comment on each others' entries and ask each other questions. Having used this, I thought of another idea for my 8th graders in Multimedia. They could post their Photoshop creations, and the classmates could share critiques right on the pages. I was wondering how other educators were using this tool. I found a VoiceThread filled with examples of how to use this tool in a variety of ways, such as a formative assessment, where students used a drawing tool to circle part of an artwork and then explain how the selection illustrated an art concept. Another teacher used the Voicethread for a class Book Talk. Another project had students post pod casts instead of audio recordings in a higher ed class for online reflection, which was neat because the classmates could actually see each other. Voicethread is definitely more interactive than what I thought, and I like the privacy aspect of the teacher account, as far as my students are concerned.