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Adventures in VoiceThreading
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 VoiceThread offers is collaboration. Which is where the educational value comes in - having students add their own thoughts and reflections, as well as listening to those of others, has obvious potential for our classes.
It sounded like something which could be useful for my senior school classes so I decided to check it out.
I'll use this blog to record my experiences and would be very interested to hear from others who have made use of it in their teaching.
After watching the intro / overview on the main page, the first thing I did was read the section of the site dedicated to educational uses:
http://ed.voicethread.com/about/overview/
That was enough to persuade me to give it a try. Who would be my first experimental subjects? I looked no further than my SL grade 11 Biology students. The recently extracted DNA from strawberries and I thought the photos I took of that lesson might be suitable for a first attempt.
The next step was registering with the site which was very quick and painless.
After setting up my account (and skipping the trivial "add picture of me" stage until I'd taken care of business!) I was ready to upload some pictures stored in iPhoto on my MacBook. Unlike earlier versions, iPhoto '08 protects the stored images so that they're not directly accessible from the finder browser. That meant that I couldn't simply navigate to the pictures from the VoiceThread uploader. The solution was to open iPhoto, select the images I wanted to use (this gave me the opportunity to name each image with a useful title) then export them to a folder I'd made within the 'Pictures' folder for my account. That only took a couple of minutes.
Having done that, I now had the images in a location where the VoiceThread uploader could see them.
PROBLEM: although I was browsing to the appropriate file and selecting it, the VoiceThread uploader didn't seem to be doing anything. I thought that maybe it HAD uploaded the images but just wasn't telling me, so I went ahead and PUBLISHED the VoiceThread, only to discover .... that it was empty. Great! That looks cool! "Check out my empty VoiceThread!". Thankfully, after finding the 'edit' button (looks like a metal cog), I was able to delete that first embarrassment.
A quick rummage through the VoiceThread FAQ revealed that (although the VoiceThread site didn't automatically detect this) the problem could be due to the flash plug-in needed by the VT uploader. I visited the Adobe website and installed the latest verison of Flash for OS X:
http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=displayStoreSelector&keyword=cart
(be sure to choose Option 1: Intel-based Macs)
after which ... SUCCESS!!! All of photos uploaded quickly and easily.
The next thing I did was to add a caption to each pic since VT seemed unable to convert the photo titles I'd added in iPhoto into captions. Again, very quick and easy.
Changing the order of the photos so that they ran in the sequence I wanted couldn't have been easier - you simply drag them into place and they automatically nudge the others along to make room.
I'd also shot a minute or so of video during the lesson in question so decided to edit that together in iMovie '08, export it (share--> export movie) and select the exported file from the VT uploader. Once again it was quickly added to my VT clips viewer from where I could drag it to the point in the slideshow where I wanted it.
The final step was to add my off-the-cuff vocal comments. This process is quick and intuitive. If you grind to a halt mid-speech (hey! that only happened to me once ... or twice) with one click you can dispatch the offending recording and start again. All very simple.
You can see the resulting work-in-progress here:
http://voicethread.com/?#u57253.b66461
(you'll have to register first)
The next step is to invite my 11th graders to add their own comments and reflections.
I'm hoping they'll be stimulated by this first example and I'll be encouraging them to make their own VoiceThreads in the near future. I've already started thinking about the various ways I can make use of this. Some of them even include assessment!!
More soon.
Philip
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 VoiceThread offers is collaboration. Which is where the educational value comes in - having students add their own thoughts and reflections, as well as listening to those of others, has obvious potential for our classes.
It sounded like something which could be useful for my senior school classes so I decided to check it out.
I'll use this blog to record my experiences and would be very interested to hear from others who have made use of it in their teaching.
After watching the intro / overview on the main page, the first thing I did was read the section of the site dedicated to educational uses:
http://ed.voicethread.com/about/overview/
That was enough to persuade me to give it a try. Who would be my first experimental subjects? I looked no further than my SL grade 11 Biology students. The recently extracted DNA from strawberries and I thought the photos I took of that lesson might be suitable for a first attempt.
The next step was registering with the site which was very quick and painless.
After setting up my account (and skipping the trivial "add picture of me" stage until I'd taken care of business!) I was ready to upload some pictures stored in iPhoto on my MacBook. Unlike earlier versions, iPhoto '08 protects the stored images so that they're not directly accessible from the finder browser. That meant that I couldn't simply navigate to the pictures from the VoiceThread uploader. The solution was to open iPhoto, select the images I wanted to use (this gave me the opportunity to name each image with a useful title) then export them to a folder I'd made within the 'Pictures' folder for my account. That only took a couple of minutes.
Having done that, I now had the images in a location where the VoiceThread uploader could see them.
PROBLEM: although I was browsing to the appropriate file and selecting it, the VoiceThread uploader didn't seem to be doing anything. I thought that maybe it HAD uploaded the images but just wasn't telling me, so I went ahead and PUBLISHED the VoiceThread, only to discover .... that it was empty. Great! That looks cool! "Check out my empty VoiceThread!". Thankfully, after finding the 'edit' button (looks like a metal cog), I was able to delete that first embarrassment.
A quick rummage through the VoiceThread FAQ revealed that (although the VoiceThread site didn't automatically detect this) the problem could be due to the flash plug-in needed by the VT uploader. I visited the Adobe website and installed the latest verison of Flash for OS X:
http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=displayStoreSelector&keyword=cart
(be sure to choose Option 1: Intel-based Macs)
after which ... SUCCESS!!! All of photos uploaded quickly and easily.
The next thing I did was to add a caption to each pic since VT seemed unable to convert the photo titles I'd added in iPhoto into captions. Again, very quick and easy.
Changing the order of the photos so that they ran in the sequence I wanted couldn't have been easier - you simply drag them into place and they automatically nudge the others along to make room.
I'd also shot a minute or so of video during the lesson in question so decided to edit that together in iMovie '08, export it (share--> export movie) and select the exported file from the VT uploader. Once again it was quickly added to my VT clips viewer from where I could drag it to the point in the slideshow where I wanted it.
The final step was to add my off-the-cuff vocal comments. This process is quick and intuitive. If you grind to a halt mid-speech (hey! that only happened to me once ... or twice) with one click you can dispatch the offending recording and start again. All very simple.
You can see the resulting work-in-progress here:
http://voicethread.com/?#u57253.b66461
(you'll have to register first)
The next step is to invite my 11th graders to add their own comments and reflections.
I'm hoping they'll be stimulated by this first example and I'll be encouraging them to make their own VoiceThreads in the near future. I've already started thinking about the various ways I can make use of this. Some of them even include assessment!!
More soon.
Philip
Comments are closed for this blog post
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Comment by Philip Roberts on February 27, 2008 at 8:27am - Free? One of my all-time favourite words! Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.
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Comment by Robyn Hardy on February 26, 2008 at 8:29pm -
Yeah Mac!!! Spent ages trying to get a voice thread up and running on my PC today and frankly ran out of ideas about what I could be doing wrong when I could not get it working. Tried it tonight on the Mac - after following Philips directions - and it worked first time. Thanks Philip!
I noticed that as educators we can get a free Go Pro account. Without this you can only have three voice threads at any point otherwise there is a charge.
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Comment by Philip Roberts on February 26, 2008 at 4:16pm
- Yes, I realised I'd made it 'private'. It's now public, so you should be able to see it.
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Comment by Julie Lindsay on February 25, 2008 at 6:47pm
- Philip, I cannot seem to access your file....or when I do it is blank. I am starting Voice Thread with Grade 6 as part of their New technologies unit. I haven't used it before so thanks for sharing your details, and journey much appreciated.
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Comment by Jill Boulanger on February 25, 2008 at 6:29pm - Is this from our conversation on Thursday? I showed some sample clips to my students during UOI. They were really excited about the possibilities of using voice thread for their upcoming art exhibition. Some students wanted to share their stories orally and some were excited to create a painting or a sculpture, photographing it and then narrate their feelings about the process. I am looking forward to it! Thanks for troubleshooting it for me :) Jill
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