Voice Threads

Most children spend their time outside of class looking around the internet and chatting to one another. So when Bill Ferriter a sixth grade teacher discovered he could engage his students online in a collaborative, multimedia slide show called Voice Thread he decided to use it.

VoiceThread allows you to extend the classroom, it is an interactive media album, basically just online slide shows of images, documents or videos that people are able to comment on whether it is audio or in text. VoiceThread is a great tool; it allows everyone to collaborate outside the classroom. Most classroom discussions do not bring a rich source of discussion unless there is a classroom with outspoken people, but the quiet shy type rarely participates largely because they do not want to be wrong in front of their peers, having VoiceThread allows these shy children to comment without being fearful.

Having VoiceThread allows you to bring learning outside of the classroom, as class related topics can be discussed when children go home, because it is difficult to fit all subjects into a day, you can easily post something and people can reply.

Like Blogging VoiceThread can be commented on by anyone so people in other time zones can be in on the conversation. This is great for multiple perspectives and for sharing work, it allows children to be in charge of their own work which makes it more meaningful.

Another great thing about VoiceThread is you are able to communicate via any means, comments can take the form of text, webcam, and audio even if you do not have a microphone you can use the phone. This makes commenting available for everyone. The only problem lies in the availability of computers, not all classrooms have computers so therefore it is hard for every child to be able to comment, if we were to look outside the classroom although we are living in a digital age and most people do have computers we can not forget those who don’t, and for those who do not have a computer they are likely to be disadvantaged, so I believe it is best to use VoiceThread as well as face to face communication largely so everybody has a chance to contribute.

Motivation to want to comment shouldn’t be an issue in the article Ferriter states that 35 out of his 53 students commented, that is more than half, I believe that children much prefer this safety net as they can think about their comments beforehand, usually something you can not do in the classroom. VoiceThread allows several conversational strands to be going at the same time, which is great because something’s may interest children more than others, so children can comment on things that interest them. In classrooms only one conversation can run at one time so if the child isn’t interested chances are they will tune out, whereas on VoiceThread they can find something they would like to comment on which allows them to become involved.

Reference: http://www.edutopia.org/voicethread-interactive-multimedia-albums/ accessed 15/06/08