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Further adventures in VoiceThreading
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 Understanding" (e.g. food chains, life cycles, human impact) in the form of a sculpture or collage made entirely of beach debris.
The area is littered with drift wood, washed up (and wind-blown) garbage of all kinds and naturally this activity provided an excuse for a beach clean-up (at the end of the day all of the students 'creations' were scooped into garbage bags and taken to the skips).
I photographed each of the groups' creations and posted the photos onto a new VoiceThread when we got back.
This morning I had my grade 6 class register with VT, then post a comment on their own VT slide (e.g. explaining that this pile of junk actually symbolised predator - prey relationships!) and choose 3 other groups' work on which to leave a (positive!) comment. They explored the 'on-image doodling' tool and I demonstrated the voice-comment option by having them look at the Strawberry DNA VT.
If you'd like to take a look at my 2nd VT, search for "QA Grade 6 SWW" and you'll find it. Feel free to leave comments!
My next plan is to learn about the 'vidoodling' tool and to develop an assessment (or assessment-prep) activity around this technology.
Philip
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 Understanding" (e.g. food chains, life cycles, human impact) in the form of a sculpture or collage made entirely of beach debris.
The area is littered with drift wood, washed up (and wind-blown) garbage of all kinds and naturally this activity provided an excuse for a beach clean-up (at the end of the day all of the students 'creations' were scooped into garbage bags and taken to the skips).
I photographed each of the groups' creations and posted the photos onto a new VoiceThread when we got back.
This morning I had my grade 6 class register with VT, then post a comment on their own VT slide (e.g. explaining that this pile of junk actually symbolised predator - prey relationships!) and choose 3 other groups' work on which to leave a (positive!) comment. They explored the 'on-image doodling' tool and I demonstrated the voice-comment option by having them look at the Strawberry DNA VT.
If you'd like to take a look at my 2nd VT, search for "QA Grade 6 SWW" and you'll find it. Feel free to leave comments!
My next plan is to learn about the 'vidoodling' tool and to develop an assessment (or assessment-prep) activity around this technology.
Philip
Comments are closed for this blog post
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Comment by Sam Liberto on March 4, 2008 at 6:46pm -
Very cool Philip. This is a great stimulus for students because it's so visual. I'll have to give it a try.
I enjoyed pictures and comments.
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