Before viewing the VoiceThread video i had heard of a VoiceThread, but had never actually experimented or used one. You may be asking what a VoiceThread actually is, well it is a powerful technology that lets the teacher and students make comments about images or videos. The comments can be made using text, your voice or you can upload files & video that you have created to voice your opinions. 
I think this tool would be a great addition to a classroom as students will be engaged and able to comment on images through different types of literacies to communication their views on a topic. This tool would be appropriate for both the upper school and the lower school as younger students can voice their comments and the older students can type or voice their comments depending which option they would prefer to use.As an activity for the younger students i would upload food images and have them add comments. I would put pictures of healthy and unhealthy food and have them comment on whether it is healthy/unhealthy? why is healthy/unhealthy? this way students are using, "problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making and evaluation" (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999) to state their views on whether the food is healthy or unhealthy.
This is the URL for the VoiceThread i have created http://voicethread.com/share/586717/ (it is very simple, if using with students i would add more pictures, i would add my voice as an introduction with instructions on what they have to do. Using this in the classroom will, "increase the motivation for students to learn" (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999). Students also have the opportunity to see how their peers have classified objects and from this it could lead into a class discussion.
Bronte, I think the idea of the healthy food voice thread is a great idea and could be adapated to use with various year levels. As you state VoiceThread is a great tool for encouraging multiliteracies, I think this can be related cross curricular as it gives students an authentic experience with a specific focus while incorporating visual literacies and semiotic processes as well as traditional literacies.
ReplyDeletehi Bronte, Ithink your idea for the healthy food voice thread would be very effective. To make it more interesting maybe you could ask the students to take pictures of their lunch and comment on that. Therefore the students are relating to real world scenarios and donating their pictures to share with the class, which fits in with the engagement theory. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteCheers Casey