Portfolios for All Ages with Voicethread

I am an avid Voicethread fan. Even though I only used it for one year in my history class, I found it engaging to students and really made me think where my lessons were going. So I'll outline below how I used it and how I should have used Voicethread which I just found out at ISTE yesterday.

My students were taught to work in 3's. Not just in groups, but in Voicethread, they were asked to comment 3 times, on 3 slides, and to collaborate by combining three separate concepts into 1. I'll elaborate. I created something called a PSI or Primary Source Investigation. The students were asked to figure out how the three primary sources related to each other. The whole concept was to take them to a higher level of thinking. So we did several things like the American Indians, Wild Bill Hickock and the Carlyle Scholl in Pennsylvania to help them figure out how assimilation worked or didn't. We tried the 3 dictators from WWII in order to find similarities and differences. I monitored the comments and had just one rule: every comment needed to add something new to the discussion. If it did not, it would not be accepted. Moderation helped with that rule.

Now with the new iPad app and the html management available to teachers, I can image a teacher visiting a museum and creating the tour in Voicethread. Using just an iPhone, a teacher could walk around the museum and comment on how what he/she was seeing relates to the curriculum. Once at school, students can experience the field trip through the teacher's eyes, answer probing questions and interact with the teachers footsteps through the museum rather than a canned virtual tour.

Today I learned how one school district is using Voicethread as a student portfolio system. If you have never worked with Voicethread before, it is a beautiful archival option as well because it accepts MS Word Documents as well as Excel Spreadsheets and of course PowerPoint. You can also upload movies. Any photo, including screen shots works too. The ability of the teacher to leave Voicecomments is tremendous. And now when uploading student accounts, a Graduation Date option is available for easy tracking of school year and their progress. Each year, students can upload their best work with included teacher comments

If you teach foreign language you've already heard of the magic of Rosetta Stone. I've envisioned Voicethread as a custom Rosetta Stone - like environment for students if a teacher is willing to put in the time to create the exercises. Rosetta Stone harnesses it's power through visuals and voice, I think Voicethread has that down pat.

If you have any interesting uses for Voicethread in the classroom, leave me a comment.

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