The Story of Jessica - A breathe of Fresh Wilderness Air - VoiceThread



Katie Tegtmeyer's flickr Photostream

The third leg of my wilderness excursion led me to VoiceThread.  I was vaguely aware of this tool – something someone had mentioned in a conversation I only partially listened to.  Regardless, it was terrain I was not familiar with.  (Have I packed enough duct tape???)

This is my experimental piece - The Story of Jessica.  Jess is our latest addition to the family.  Just like all the others, she was a surprise (I have to know people better before I share the personal details, but there is a humorous story for each child - only the ladies on my ringette team know them all!)  What I share here is the arrival of Jessica (whom I really wanted to name Darby, my maiden name, but my husband couldn't get past picturing my dad and brother when he said the name).  I used these pictures to create the VoiceThread, and to play with the voice recording and drawing tools.  I don't start to experiment with the drawing tools until the last several slides, when I begin talking about the Corel PaintShop Photo Pro photo editing tools I was using (which I love - I have the Pro X2 version, but the newest version is the Pro X3 and was highly recommended in the workshop I took on Digital Storytelling with Bernajean Porter).



chucklepix (Steve)'s flickr photostream

 The duct tape can stay in the bag for this presentation tool - there were no wounds.  If Animoto was the gentle stream, then VoiceThread is the fresh wilderness air - refreshing to breathe and a sense of clarity follows.  The process was again simple - the creators of these tools must know people like me, lacking patience and technological savvy, are using them. 

First, I created an account.  I tried to set up the free Pro VoiceThread account - Berger and Trexler (2010) indicate the Pro account is available to teachers at no cost (p. 138) when you sign up with your school email.  I set up the free account for now, but if I were to use in the classroom, I do recommend the Pro account - it allows you to create a protected account which all students can use (even if they are under the age of 13 which is the age required to set up their own accounts).  This assures the privacy of the account and for the participants (Berger & Trexler, p. 138). 

Next, I uploaded my pictures, arranged the order of the pictures and then added my voice recordings.  I figured all of these steps out without tutorials and on my first try - the steps really are fail proof.  I previewed my recordings and if I didn't like the recording I simply "cancelled" it and recorded a different one.  After I was comfortable with that feature, I experimented with the drawing tool.  Again, after the first or second use, it became a natural tool to use while recording your comment, enabling me to clearly identify which aspects of the slide I was referring to.  It was similar to how I would teach using my Smartboard in my classroom.

I did look at a tutorial about Video Doodling and this is where I made my first attempt at participating in someone else's VoiceThread.  I was able to post this VoiceThread to the sidebar of this blog using the embedding feature within VoiceThread.  This feature makes it easy to share the VoiceThread on a number of different platforms.  Just as a note, the VoiceThread was too large for my sidebar, but I was able to move it to different locations on my blog on the "design" page.  I didn't like the location, so I copied the HTML text from the sidebar and inserted it into my blog.  Below I have the inserted collaborative piece as well as the link.

http://voicethread.com/share/21651/

With the basics of how to create and publish a VoiceThread out of the way, I began to explore how I would use this tool.  VoiceThread has a Digital Library and Browse section which gives many examples.  Again, it is a mash-up of tools such as Audacity and PowerPoint and other video tools, to create an enhanced presentation. 

Berger and Trexler recommended Bill Ferriter's site and described it as a VoiceThread 101 site (2010, p. 135).  His blog is Digitally Speaking and really does cover everything you need to understand VoiceThread and the possibilities for it.  You will find resources for teaching students how to create a VoiceThread, proper etiquette, assessment tools and exemplars.  It is a great site to include in your initial exploration.

Another blog with extensive information regarding the educational benefits of VoiceThread is InfoTech4Learning.  The section is titled "VoiceThread in Teaching and Learning" and summarizes the uses as identified in several sources.  Again, this is a site recommended by Berger and Trexler (2010, p. 136).  Below is an excerpt from the section of "VoiceThread in Teaching and Learning" on InfoTech4Learning:

 

Benefits of VoiceThread according to Valenza and others:

• simple and easy
• focus on the content instead of the tool; can serve as a form of free writing (Ferriter)
• requires simple hardware and minimal memory requirements (Langhorst); minimal tech-barrier (Ferriter)
• encourages collaborative storytelling
• ability to use powerful images - one or many
• users can zoom in to see detail and out to see big picture (haven’t figure that one out yet)
• ability to add text
• easy to capture voices
• inspires ongoing conversation about each image (Ferriter)
• build fluency, precision and voice in second language
• new dimension for creative analysis of historical photographs, maps and artifacts
• ability to give and receive feedback from peers, teachers [formative and summative assessment], parents and other relatives, local and global community (Fryer)
• effective tutorials (although I didn’t find them or the website design as intuitive as some of the other web 2.0 tool tutorials)
• can be used “as a storytelling tool, a deep thinking tool, a research tool, an expository communication tool, and even an asessment tool” (Dyck)
• allows for differentiation to accomodate different learning needs and styles, another option for struggling or reluctant writers (Dyck)
• allows the teachers to seamlessly integrate digital collaboration into the currciulum (Ferriter)
• provides another opportunity to discuss copyright

Finally, one last site Berger and Trexler (2010) recommend is Ned's Keeper "VoiceThread in the Classroom".  This site gives 40 ideas of ways VoiceThread can be used in the classroom.  Not to mention, it is a great site and is a member of Star Discovery Educator's Network.

emrank's flickr photostream

On a personal level, I found a VoiceThread on High Speed Photography which was very informative.  There were VoiceThread by children about drawings, discussions of pictures and movies, to name a few.  As I was looking through these, I thought how wonderful it would be if there were a driver training study guide on VoiceThread (my daughter is currently studying to take her learners and finds it quite boring).  An interactive VoiceThread would be a great place for people studying to prepare for the test - visuals with descriptions, plus the opportunity to post questions/thoughts as well as listen to others' questions or thoughts would be very beneficial.  It would give the learner visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning experiences.



mosman library's flickr photostream

On a professional level, the Digital Library provided many examples for classroom use, ranging from kindergarten to post-secondary and in any subject area imaginable.  I watched a VoiceThread of a commercial students created, demonstrating collaboration and participation by all group members, as well as feedback from classmates and the instructor.  There were reflections from post-secondary on-line learners who commented on the benefit of using VoiceThread to better communicate as a result of being able to interpret tone, phrasing, and other aspect of verbal communication which are not experienced in written communication.  Students felt there was less occurrence of misinterpretation of a post when it was done verbally rather than typewritten.  Other examples demonstrated interpretations of poetry, lessons in math and sciences, as well as many other subject areas.  One particular VoiceThread inspired me to use this tool with novel studies, reading circles and book clubs.  In Book Review: A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park from C Vidor, Linda Sue Park educates the reader about the background and setting with visuals and commentary which create a foundation to better understand the story. 



BlackBurnPhoto's flickr photostream

I am currently working on Artemis Fowl with my grade 8 students, and we just did a review of the exposition of the novel.  I could have added so much more understanding with visuals of Ireland and other setting used in the novel.  With deeper knowledge of elements contained within the novel, students can better understand the author's choices for aspects such as location and era.  Further, to have such a resource and make it available online to parents and students allows those who miss the lesson or need to review for clarification the ability to access the information outside the classroom.  As stated in the tutorials on VoiceThread, it also allows the discussion to continue after the class has ended.  Some of my students who are reluctant to participate in class may feel more comfortable with this type of participation.

The key ingredient with VoiceThread is the collaboration aspect.  It is a "free online, asynchronous media tool [...]that permits the user to import and display a variety of media for the purpose of group discussion" (Berger & Trexler, p. 133).  People can contribute thoughts and comments in several ways (phone, microphone, text, webcam, and audio) and can doodle on the slides.  The creator of the VoiceThread can choose which comments to display, enhancing the learning in the presentation.  Again, I refer back to the Artemis Fowl novel study.  I recently did a class on the plot diagram.  As a class we drew from the chapters we have already read to build pieces of the plot diagram.  VoiceThread would have been a great place to collaboratively discuss and build the diagram. Further, it would be a great resource for students' final essays and projects for the novel study. 

Breathing in deeply (happy I'm just breathing at all) and enjoying the trek!  Moving forward with my sites set on the bigger picture - Google Earth!


References

Berger, P. & Trexler, S. (2010).  Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Sanata Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.