Voice Thread

VoiceThread is a great tool!!

I loved using VoiceThread, and found it pretty easy to use.
At first I was confused on how to access Picasa, in order to post a slide show I had in my web folder there. I was not able to download to VoiceThread from Picasa, but was able to copy the entire slide show to my desk top and down load from there. Adding comments was intimidating at first. Eventually though, I did get the hang of it and was able to avoid the awkward silence at the beginning of recording a clip.

Any upper elementary aged student (grades 4-6) using this application could easily figure out, with instructional help from a teacher, how to make, add voice comments, and post a video clip to an online project, blog or website.

I think that this application could be used by schools very easily. When my daughter, Eva, was in the third grade, she and her cousin from Wisconsin visited each others schools. Eva invited her cousin first to come to Fairbanks, because school let out later in the spring in Wisconsin. To prepare her cousin, and her cousin's class, the cousin's teacher proposed that this be a long distance, class information exchange. The Wisconsin class sent the Fairbanks students information about Wisconsin; it's economy, their cities; what the students at the Wisconsin elementary school did in school, and their interests outside of school. The Fairbanks students sent books, donated by The Fairbanks News Agency, to first be used in the classroom, and then to be donated to the Wisconsin school library, essays that the Fairbanks class wrote about the city they lived in, information about the state of Alaska, and the city of Fairbanks , and any other information they felt would be useful in educating their Wisconsin counterparts about our state. Eva and her cousin spent a week in school together here in Fairbanks; and then left for Wisconsin to spend a week in the cousin's class.

Both teachers felt that this was a worthwhile endeavor, and helped each group to learn about the other. I think that if VoiceThread had been a reality then, it could have been an invaluable tool to help each group of students teach the other about their hometowns and the state they lived in. The teachers could have facilitated lessons, questions, and general exchange of information between the two classroom's, via use of VoiceThread.

It is common now, for schools to have partner schools, in sister cities. VoiceThread is a good, easy to use tool for them to use to teach each other about their lives.

As I have stated in previous blog entries, this is an excellent tool to use to make the student the teacher. There is no better way to boost confidence and self esteem than to allow a student to teach someone what they already know. It is good experience for a student to go through the process of writing a 'lesson plan', in order to be able to work through the process of sequencing information, in order to impart knowledge.

Check out Tammy's blog for her ideas on this useful tool as well.

Online Story Book

The assignment to make a story book, using an online book making website, is an awesome idea.
My partner, Janice, and I were not sure what our subject should be. Then we decided to just present ourselves, as our lives, our hometowns (villages) are pretty different. After we got over our initial jitters over how to do it and where to start, I think that we had fun.
The website, Mixbook.com, is laid out fairly well, and is easy to use. I love all the choices for page layouts, page back rounds, and the decorative stamps. I went from being unsure if the finished product would be what I pictured in my mind-to being very satisfied with the finished product.
I do not like the prompts on every page that ask you to order the book. As an adult, I can choose to ignore that aspect of the website, I am not sure what to do to mask it for use with kids.
I love the idea of using the website to make books for use in the classroom. We use books of photographs of classmates, sort of a classroom yearbook, to help facilitate verbal interaction between students in our classroom. We have not found a more powerful tool than a book full of pictures of classmates interacting, and sharing daily activities. If we were able to use this website to make books to use in the classroom, possibly to also send them home so students could practice verbal interaction with their families-it could be a powerful tool. (Because, if students have the pictures for the parents to use as a starting place to start a conversation, the parents can then help further verbal skills.) For older students to use this website, I think could be powerful for them. They could document the group efforts that went into a project, they could use it to make an 'instructional manual' to teach a skill or lesson-the possibilities are endless. I think that I might want to use it with upper elementary aged students, right up through high school.

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