Hear Student Thinking with VoiceThread

     VoiceThread is a wonderful tool to have in your teacher toolbox. You pose a question, post a picture or video, and then students can comment on it by making an audio recording, or typing out their response or even making a video that allows them to draw on a copy of the image on the spot. 

     For my sample project I used the Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg, specifically one of the pages from this otherworldly book. Sometimes its challenging to begin writing without a warm up. As a possible pre-writing assignment to get them formulating some ideas, students talked about what they saw in the picture and what might happen next. See this VoiceThread project below. 

    This is a protected environment, people can only comment if they’ve been invited to do so. To sign up students can use school email, but if that is not an option an email will be generated by VoiceThread for log in purposes. You can use VoiceThread with Kindergarten students  all the way to adults, it is very user friendly and intuitive from the user’s end. Once set up, it truly is a breeze to use. This is one of those tools that helps even reticent students be heard. There is a free app or you can access it from a computer. VoiceThread used to be free, but it is no longer so. Rates are pretty reasonable though, for a classroom teacher, just $15 a month. 

     You will have access to a library of VoiceThreads, and there are some terrific examples of it being used across all disciplines. One of my favorite projects involved students making poems about depression era pictures the teacher had posted as a pre-cursor to studying that period. Students, already familiar with poems in two voices, wrote and performed a poem in two voices about each stark picture. Very powerful, check it out below!

     I can see teachers using this with a math problem, students could explain their method of solving it. You could use this before or after a field trip, post some pictures of what students will be seeing and have them comment on it, either what they think it is, or afterwards, what they learned about it. This could also make a good exit ticket.  Its a great way for students to hear each other’s thoughts, too.