VoiceThread (Thing 13)

The first time I ever heard of voicethreads was at the CEC convention in 2008 in Boston. Kate at Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs "live blogged" that session and has some excellent ideas on her post and in the comments. She also has a great post on how VoiceThread is helpful for parents of children in special education classes. My students, for example, can't go home and tell mom/dad/whoever about what they did in school that day. But I can post a voicethread (or video) to my class wiki and the parents can then see it. I can only imagine what it must be like to have no idea of what your child does all day at school. I mean, even the kid who answers "nothing" every time you asked what they did that day will occassionally give you a little more detail. I think that Voice Threads would be a great way to collaborate with parents - let them see AND COMMENT on what their child is doing! How wonderful would it be to go back to the voice thread the next day and let some of my students listen to their parents (or Uncle Fred miles away in California) commenting on their work?

Kate also posts voicethreads of activities -such as the Princess Bride unit, snow activity, and texture lesson - that she does with her high school class of students with severe and multiple disabilities. (Can you tell that hers is one of my favorite blogs? lol) I think this is an awesome way to collaborate with other teachers!! Especially in classrooms where we do so many "nontraditional" activities, it helps so much to see ideas that others have come up with.

For general education classes, Leila Weir blogs at edutopia that Bill Ferritter (a 6th grade LA and SS teacher) says he is able to get more students to participate by using voice threads in his class, and is able to get students to write about things they normally wouldn't.

I'm excited about voicethreads and can't wait to start using them on my class wiki!