VoiceThread is one of my favorite classroom tools, its versatile, works great for all learners, has a multitude of uses, and is an excellent use of formative assessment. VoiceThread promotes collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to understand it!
Why:
VoiceThread is a multimedia technology tool that allows student's to collaborate, comment and share, images, audio files, and documents with teachers, as well as each other. Teachers can create groups and moderate comments. VoiceThread is a great opportunity for students to think critically about images. I see VoiceThread as having no age limitations, it works as well with elementary age students, as it does high school.
How:
I use VoiceThread within my visual arts classes as a form of online critique. Students will share work for a particular project, post visual resources documenting historical connections to their creation, and I am able to provide them with feedback via VoiceThread.
Here is an example of a VoiceThread I use with my Advance Art Students in my, "What is Art?' unit.
What Next?
Create your own VoiceThread! Here is a short video that will provide you with the basics of creating a VoiceThread. You can create a thread in about the same amount of time it takes to compose an email. VoiceThread is available on both mobile devices and as a Chrome App. You can also access it from any computer or web browser. VoiceThread has the capability to upload and share various types of media, including documents, images, audio files, presentations, and videos. Most people choose to keep their threads private, or share them with specific people, but you can open them up to the entire world if you choose. VoiceThread has several products available, including a free account to individuals who are 13 and have an email address. Educators or their schools may choose to purchase an single educator license, a school license, or a district license. These paid subscriptions provide educators with many additional features beyond what is included in the free account. Features include: more control over how many VoiceThreads they can create, the ability to create and control student accounts, as well as support to help the educator provide a rich VoiceThread experience, for their student learners.
Now create your own thread!
Here is an additional example of a VoiceThread.
How Much Does it Cost?
The main drawback of Voicethread is that educators are no longer given free unlimited accounts. Fortunately, under the current plan, it’s free to create 3 web-based Voicethreads with up to 50 slides each and unlimited commenting. You also get 5 free Voicethreads on mobile devices using the app. If you want unlimited Voicethreads via the app, it’s $5.99/month. A classroom subscription for the web-based version of Voicethread is $15/month or $60/year.Keep in mind that if you create individual (free) accounts for your students, you can create new Voicethreads that way. So not only will you have the 3 free Voicethreads under your own account, if you have a class of 25 kids and each one gets 3 web-based Voicethreads free, that’s 78 Voicethreads your class can use throughout the school year.
Additional Resources:
Here is an amazing example of an educator going much deeper with VoiceThread than I did. I found his work to be very inspiring and plan to use some of his ideas to enrich some of my work with VoiceThread in the future. Check it out!
Here is another strong example of VoiceThread’s use to drive student discussions. I’m really excited to see that it’s being promoted not only in the K-12 system, but also in Higher Ed.
A great article from Edutopia describing how you can get students motivated to discuss issues outside the classroom.
Two wonderful resources that provides examples of VoiceThreads for a variety of content areas. The examples were created by education students. A couple good reads, very interesting.
Link to VoiceThread Tutorials:
Voicethread Universal is compatible with screen-readers and great for students with visual impairments
Important Links
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