Voice Thread

Classroom Conversations Beyond the Walls in School

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in my first Voice Thread. What is Voice Thread you ask? Well, Voice Thread is a web tool that allows someone to post audio, text, image, or video files then invite others to reply with comments. Voice Thread then allows the people commenting to upload their thoughts in written, audio, or visual formats. What a great way to differentiate for responses!

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I can see this being used with students to facilitate conversations outside of the classroom and school day with their peers and other people around the world. Conversations could range from reading responses, predictions for science experiments, discussions regarding problem solving, or analyzing primary sources in social studies. The possibilities are endless.

Another opportunity for using Voice Thread is allow teachers to share ideas. For example, teachers could share ideas how Voice Thread or other web tools are used with their students.

I have only one disappointment with Voice Thread, and it's not the tool I'm disappointed with. Students must be 13 years of age and have their parents sign them up. I realize it is a privacy issue to keep our students safe. But, our intermediate school consists of 5th and 6th graders, which fall into the 10 to 12 year old age category. This makes this tool a little more difficult to use, but Voice Thread is still viable option I will use to facilitate student and teacher conversations.

Voice Thread offers class, school, or district subscriptions. These subscriptions offer students and teachers a private educational community to share and communicate not only with their school, but nationally and globally.

Imagine If...

Imagine if students had the opportunity to have conversations and share information via Voice Thread with students from different countries they are studying in social studies. I wonder what kind of connections they would make?