What is VoiceThread?
VoiceThread is a network where students develop the “Four Cs” that will benefit them for the whole lifetime: critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.
It is an online interaction space that you can upload pictures, documents, videos and so on to create a slideshow or a photostory. You may wonder, why do we need VoiceThread when we already have movie maker and imovie to make slideshows? It is what comes after making the slideshows that matters more. Students not only looking at the slideshow passively. They make comments on, critique, present their ideas, respond to others and sometimes even defend themselves using VoiceThread. Doing so help them develop higher order thinking skills that are essential for successful learning. They will engage in an ongoing conversation with their classmates, teachers and even some VoiceThread users they don’t know. The diversity of users also allow students to interact with people and learn more about different cultures.
How it works
There are training videos on the official website and the page below is specific to using VoiceThread in school.
The videos shows you how to import different forms of media (e.g. pictures, documents) to create a slideshow. Then you and your students can record audio comments by clicking the microphone button.
Benefits
- In terms of speaking and listening skills, VoiceThread is very useful as it increases the number of opportunities to speak up. The time in class is short and when teachers use IRF sequence a lot, not all students get to answer. Study also finds that even in an interactive classroom, the amount of students talk is still limited.
- VoiceThread also increases the quality of responses as it is self-paced. Students can rehearse and rephrase, practice as many times as they can before submitting. This reminds me the concepts of equality and equity in education. Equality means that we make sure all students have equal access to resources. But the truth is, some students do need more support to get to where they are supposed to be. I don’t think we should lower the standard, so here’s where equity comes in. The students who are falling behind should be given more support, which does not necessarily mean extra teaching from teachers. Sometimes they just need more time and practice. Take speaking for example, if they use VoiceThread to give comments, they can succeed if they are willing to spend more time on it. This narrows the achievement gap between the more able ones and the weaker ones.
Limitations:
- Although the fact that the commenting is not synchronized allow students to practice more before submitting, some may argue this does not resemble the authentic conversation.
- It is not easy to organise the comment when they are audios rather than in written form.
- Teachers may need to spend extra time to listen to all the comments before giving feedback.
Some examples of good VoiceThread
Example 1. Focusing on pronunciation and intonation
-This is created by a teacher for reading aloud practice
Example 2. Structured practice
-This is created by a teacher. She put a Wordle with some useful phrases and recorded a sentence as a demonstration. It is interesting that some participants not only completed the task by making sentences using the structure but also complimented the Wordle made by the teacher. So even VoiceThread is not synchronized, people can still have authentic communication and express themselves, as long as the environment (be it real or virtual) is friendly.
Example 3. Freer talk
-This is created by a student. She imported a may and explained how she got to school. The teacher gave her feedback in the comments. If you listen to the comments you will find users from different parts of the world, who do not know the student at all also left comments and encouraged her. This shows VoiceThread allows us to interact with users from different backgrounds.
Example 4. Maths Instruction
-This is a pre-lesson activity created by a Maths teacher and is an example of CLIL and a Flipped classroom. The teacher used the comment moderation function of VoiceThread and we can see students can have different solutions to the same problem! It will be so useful and interesting for students to see this and learn from each other. Teachers can also make use of the function and turn this into an assessment activity, either before, in-class, or after the class to check students’ understanding.
And then click ‘Math Instruction’ in the list of videos.
Example 5. Collaborative VoiceThread
-This is incredible. I’ve never thought of doing something like this.
This is a collaborative VT from three different classes across the United States
1st stage
Second graders from Utah first drew a place they love to visit or imagine visiting.
2nd stage
9th graders from Colorado used a Wiki to divide up the artwork. They composed poems for the drawing and attached it as a comment on the VT.
3rd stage
5th-6th grade music composition students from Texas composed an original piece of music for each picture using GarageBand. Overall, it took about 2 1/2 months to put together.
As put by the VT team:
“This VT is an example of the power of collaboration using technology. This encompasses art through words, visuals, and music.”
Using VoiceThread in Hong Kong Context
I particularly like example 5 but I can imagine how much time and effort have been spend on organising that project. It is nice for schools to work together. I think we can start with something similar to be done within a school. The project can be a cross-level and cross-subject activity. For example, making water rocket is a common task in General Studies lessons in Hong Kong but usually only higher form students can participate. Now I’ve got some ideas to get the entire school involved by using VoiceThread.
Stage 1. P.3 students: Look for a video explaining how water rockets work and created a VT.
Stage 2. P.5 students: Writing up procedures of making one and record it on the same VT.
Stage 3. P.6 students: Commenting on the VT, make changes to the procedures if they need to, and make a water rocket.
Stage 4. P.1-2 students: Draw the water rocket made by their seniors and add it to the VT.
Stage 5. All the water rockets will be launched on the same day as a mini competition. P.4 students use Canva to design a flyer to promote the activity and invite their family to come. The flyer will be printed out (small amount for each design) and also scanned to the VT.
***Students work in groups in every stage
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