Philip Roberts's Blog (3)

Ok, so by now you'll have realised that I'm seeing some potential in this VoiceThread thing. In terms of student responses to it, as with any new resource, their enthusiasm may simply be a reaction to its novelty. One thing's for sure - the ease of use and simplicity of the concept mean that it's the kind of ICT that anyone can quickly start using with any grade level. As important is the fact that an audio visual representation of concepts (and of students' understanding) can be useful to any… Continue

After sharing my first VoiceThread with the intended audience (my Grade 11 Biologists one or two felt confident enough to leave text comments while others made largely irrelevant noises into their microphones), I decided to embark on a sequel. Yesterday we took the entire Grade 6 for a day trip to the Schools Without Walls site al Al Khor. The 5 classes rotated around 5 separate ecological activities. The activity I lead challenged the students (in groups of 3 or 4) to illustrate an "Ecological… Continue

After the recent PD days, a Primary colleague brought VoiceThread to my attention. http://voicethread.com The idea is simple but has a lot of potential. Essentially, this site allows you to create online (flash) slideshows to which subscribers can add text, voice or video comments and also sketched (animated) annotations. A slideshow with a voiceover is nothing new (you can certainly create such a thing in Keynote and export it as a flash animation or QT movie) but the Web 2.0 spin that… Continue