What's Next? Let's Make Introductions...Think Fast!

Think fast! Remember that silly command, followed by someone throwing a Frisbee (or something else) at you, with only milliseconds for you to decide to catch or duck? Here’s a new instant decision scenario for you: chocolate or vanilla? Habs or Leafs? Wikis or social networking sites?

Clearly, that split second decision may not always turn out to be the most beneficial; opting to catch the Frisbee with a burger in one hand and a beverage in the other inevitably leads to problems, but getting out of the way may mean that your dog introduces some new bite marks in that disc (or worse, some poor bystander doesn’t take kindly to childish games). I usually try to put myself in a position to make my own decisions, so I’ll take door number three; maple walnut, Bruins, and blogs.

The reasoning behind my decision-making analogy lies in the fact that I have been instructed to chose one web 2.0 tool to introduce to my school colleagues. If I am only allowed to introduce one Web 2.0 tool to staff at my school, I will wholeheartedly push for blogs. Why? The short answer is that I believe that blogs could/would/should have the most positive impact on both teachers and students. Also, as Richardson explains in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom,

Thousands of teacher and students have already incorporated Weblogs into their classrooms and into their practice. Blogs…are easily created, easily updateable Websites that allow an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection. They can also be interactive, allowing teachers and students to begin conversations or add to the information published there. Weblogs are the most widely adopted tool of the Read/Write Web so far.

Teachers who are hesitant to jump into the unknown can solace in the fact that there are numerous educators who are already making the leap into Web 2.0 via blogs, ready and waiting to assist in starting blogging, sharing blog uses in the classroom, and becoming instant guides through this strange and wonderful world of edutech.

Simply put, I believe that educators and students who have not fully explored blogging do not see the opportunities offered for learning and collaboration. I will freely admit that not too long ago I thought that most blogs were personal journals, which didn’t interest me at all. We all see websites as means to find information, but many blogs can be means to find information and take it a step further – post a comment, ask a question, subscribe to further blogs or comments…in other words, to interact more and hopefully learn more. Therefore, the first thing I’d like to do is introduce blogs, add RSS feeds, then move onto creating blogs.

I would direct those unfamiliar with blogs and blogging to:

Weblogg-ed - What better place to start than Will Richardson’s site? Aside from the plethora of information found on the site, I think Richardson has created a shining example of good writing in the edublogosphere. But more specifically, the Edu-blogs link from supportblogging.com (http://supportblogging.com/Links+to+School+Bloggers) is amazingly comprehensive, and the Weblogs in Schools wiki link is superb ( http://weblogged.wikispaces.com/Weblogs+in+Schools). Richardson’s short and sweet list of benefits to blogging in the classroom is great:

Benefits:
-Motivation
-Writing Skills
-Reading Skills
-Collaboration
-Network Building
-Community Building

For a more comprehensive explanation of why blogging can be a great thing, check out Anne Davis’s rationale at http://anne.teachesme.com/2007/01/17/rationale-for-educational-blogging/ .

Commoncraft’s Blogs in Plain English is another good introductory tool:



Here’s one site for those who know little about blogs. Not only do you get answers to basic questions, you can learn how to start a blog, add images, links, and so on.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-are-blogs-anyway.html


A scan of other bloggers’ reasons for blogging in education reveals a wealth of information, but Martin Weller’s lists of reasons why he blogs at http://www.microbiologybytes.com/AJC/whyblog.html is succinct and relevant:

My blog:
· is a place where I think, plan and reflect
· forces me to read in order to gather the input I need for my output
· is a place where I play with technology and ideas
· often surprises me
· is a place where I collaborate
· is currently the most satisfying part of my job
· is slightly dangerous
· is compulsive

Wouldn’t most teachers be curious about Weller’s reasons for blogging? I know they’ve made me think.

At the same time as I think many teachers would see benefits to student blogging, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those same educators were hesitant to create their own blogs. I think that one way to help teachers think a little further about teacher blogging is to introduce it as an alternative form of professional development. I think many teachers would welcome some deviation from the norm in this area. Luckily, some keener-type bloggers have been doing some fine blogging on just this topic! See my previous post, then go to:

http://jacquiesgreatdigitaladventure.blogspot.com/

http://alangelaar.blogspot.com/

http://jansjourneysinweb20.blogspot.com/



Now, let’s look at the challenge of making blog use by teachers and students a reality in my school. First, all teachers in the division have been given a directive to have their own website up this school year. Although the work from the teacher’s end is miniscule, it will be difficult to get many educators to do not only that but create their own blog as well as keep it updated. The only option I see at the moment is to start really small. Before introducing blogs to the entire staff, I would try to get 2 or 3 influential teachers involved, get them hooked on reading some blogs, then get them to create their own. If I want to introduce teachers to the benefits of getting their students involved in blogging, I have to get them familiar with the process first. I also want to see what ideas those educators have for using blogs in their classes.

I am starting today on my Mission: Blogging At the School Level. I am forwarding my own blog URL to a few select teachers, as well as the technology guru in my school (if I really intend to get blogging integrated into my school, I need to get him onside/online). I’m going to ask them to look at my blog on professional deveopment with blogging, then discuss it with them when time permits. Who knows where the conversation will take us?

Refreshing Professional Development: Blogging in/as/for PD

Dear Valued Educator,

Do you try to make all of your students learn the same way? Do you expect that an isolated learning experience (say, one to three hours every month) is sufficient to inspire deep knowledge? Do you think that individual learning is important, or do you think that large-group work is good enough? Can you show evidence of your learning based on those experiences?

Yours Sincerely,
A Questioning Fellow Teacher

If you answered yes to all of the above questions and you’re happy with the results, please skip the rest of this blog – it’s not for you. If, like me, you see the absurdity of my admittedly-exaggerated questions, read on, Macduff!

Many of us have come to see that we need to be a little more thoughtful and flexible in creating learning experiences for our students. So why the heck do we continue to disregard our own knowledge about how people learn when we are involved in our own professional development?

I’ve heard teachers grumble about PD sessions that were not useful, not well-planned, or not held at timely enough intervals. I’ve also been to PD sessions that were inspiring in many different ways. What I’ve also found is that a day or two after PD, I had some ideas, questions, and stimulating discussions with my peers on the previously-raised professional learning topics. Unfortunately, for some, that may have been where the learning surrounding that concept or issue ends.

How can professional development become more exciting, memorable, stimulating, inspirational, creative, and interactive? The magic answer is, “You’re looking at it.” Weblogs such as this one could be the key to unlocking much more fruitful and efficient PD for many. Let’s revisit the questions I posed above.

Do you try to make all of your students learn the same way?

If educators getting involved in reading and writing blogs on professional development, the situation of sitting in a room with the rest of the staff members listening to one speaker is no longer the same. Teachers can read a blog when they are ready to do so wherever they can connect to the Web, post comments or questions, perhaps do some quick research or follow some handy links, share some of that research or new links with colleagues, even revisit the blog if they want/need to do so. If a teacher has their own blog, they can post their own thoughts on the issue being studied. The time and space limitations that are imposed upon whole-school PD don’t have to be so restricting when a person can be brief or thorough according to what their learning need are at that point – PD based on blogs can offer that sort of flexibility.

Do you expect that an isolated learning experience (say, one to three hours every month) is sufficient to inspire deep knowledge?

Hopefully that scenario is not happening in many of ours schools or divisions. Unfortunately, I have heard about some instances where a variation on that theme is being played. Will Richardson posted about his own experience as a the hired gun public speaker:

“Either way, the experience usually serves to overwhelm, and at the end of the day (or hour) the participants head back to the craziness of their teaching lives where I’m guessing much of what they have “learned” fails to take root.” (http://weblogg-ed.com/category/professional-development/)

Again, through blogs and ensuing comments, dialogue about what is important to individuals, groups, and the whole school does not have to end or wait until the next PD opportunity. Some learners need time to process what they have learned, while some clarify their thoughts by writing – why not take advantage of those skills? Also, teachers at one school can develop their learning within a much larger context, be it division-wide, province-wide, or even globally – the Read/Write Web is not concerned with staying inside boundary-lines.

Do you think that individual learning is important, or do you think that large-group work is good enough?

Not everyone does their best learning in group settings, and some learn better individually depending on what is being learned. If a PD topic requires personal study, it’s sometimes hard to accommodate for that in staff meetings. PD through blogs could help encourage more than one style of learner – a person could read, listen, view, write, follow some links for areas of interest, receive comments or feedback from others (perhaps even from those not on staff), and so on. In this way, learners can benefit from self-directed learning as well as group collaboration, with dialogue and sharing staying as priorities. I found a diagram created by Kim Cofino at http://langwitches.org/blog/2008/11/16/second-k-12-online-conference-lan-party/ that got me thinking:



I believe that if we can use blogs (as well as wikis, RSS feeds, and other Web 2.0 tools) in our professional development, we might be able to use aspects from all 3 of the models shown in the diagram. Doug Johnson is one expert who has written about the need for “ongoing, individualized, onsite instruction and support” in professional learning, specifically as regards learning about technology (http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/why-what-how-and-who-of-staff-development.html). What do you think?

Can you show evidence of your learning based on those experiences?

If an educator can comment, recommend further links, open new lines of dialogue, bring in new contributors, and share opinions on PD issues on blogs, at the very least some level of learning will be shown. Surely some of us wonder how much professional development occurred on an individual basis after a particular session – PD blogs could at some level provide a gauge for learning and level of engagement.

I don’t think I’ve said anything revolutionary here concerning using Web 2.0 tools to revamp PD. Are these ideas feasible? Like anything in bureaucratic systems, changing how we create and utilize PD takes some thought. Will Richardson suggests a fairly simple start:
“What about giving teachers new to these technologies just enough to get them started and then take the school year (or more) to immerse them in the tools and networked learning environments where they can learn at their own pace (with some appropriate nudging and guidance from time to time)?” (http://weblogg-ed.com/category/professional-development/)

I feel confident now about the different tools and ideas we’ve been exploring in this course that I am looking forward to talking to the technology guru in my school about some of the possibilities for future PD. I have little experience with working with PD committees (none in my current school), and I can’t say how hard it will be to redesign professional opportunities, but I listened to a colleague discuss limited opportunities just a few days ago. If I can just start small and introduce some blogs that would interest others, help colleagues find some useful, appealing blogs, encourage them to comment on them and start a dialogue, a tiny step towards more rewarding PD may be taken. It seems clear to me that we should explore ways to make PD more effective and enjoyable. Here’s a few blogs and websites I’ve been following that may spark some ideas:

Doug Johnson

Langwitches

Weblogg-ed

Web 2 Tools for the Read/Write/ Web

Classroom 2.0

RSS Feeds - All You Can Eat (and More)

“(RSS feeds are) a way to leverage the talent of millions of individuals to identify truly useful information in the tidal wave of data the Internet has become.”

http://technologysource.org/article/rss/

The above quote, supplied by Mary Harrsch, epitomizes many of the positive aspects of using RSS, which some people say stands for Real Simple Syndication (Richardson), others say stands for Rich Site Summary (Harrsch), and others say means RDF Site Summary. Technically, the three different RSS explanations refer to different formats, but whatever you believe RSS stands for, hopefully you agree that most of us need a way to organize the morass of information we accumulate. RSS, simply put, lets a user subscribe to weblog entries, websites, video, audio, news and more in order to get information sent to a person who wants it. A person doesn’t have to go back and check a site or blog to see if updates have been posted, because updates are automatically sent to your blog aggregator (such as BlogLines, Google Reader, etc.). All you have to do is remember to check your feed aggregator (also known as a feed reader) and your online info will come to you. Furthermore, you can share that information in a number of ways – you can pass it on easily, a person can check what feeds you are subscribing to, you can tag the info for others, and so on. RSS is becoming one of those Web 2.0 tools that help users see things in different ways, with so many different kinds of related applications and organizational tools available that a basic description does not do it justice. For anyone looking to get started with RSS, the Common Craft video below will give you quick, simple steps.



In a wonderful piece of writing entitled Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators: A Guide to RSS and More, Quentin D’Souza has underlined the fact that where RSS feeds were formerly associated with simple blogs, the last five years have seen an amazing growth in their utilization:

“All types of web applications are using feeds to share data within social networks, through enhancing accessibility to productivity tools, research tools, watch lists, and sharing peer created content. The numbers of applications that are using feeds are growing daily.
New tools have come into existence because of RSS feeds and the trend seems to be continuing to grow. These tools allow you to remix and reformat the content of a feed in a countless different ways.”

D’Souza is not kidding when he says that there are “countless” ways to utilize feeds. There are many aggregators and other fine sites which allow a user to decide how to use search terms, organize, share, label or tag, and so on. I have been using BlogLines and Google Reader for a short while now, and I still don’t feel like I have started using them to their full potential yet. Subscribing is simple, making groups is easy, and creating useful search terms is painless, but I get the feeling that I’ll still make some useful discoveries in the future. For example, I haven’t figured out yet why video from YouTube or TeacherTube will show up on my Google Reader pane but a Voicethread will not.

Now, will RSS feeds help make the next great technological leap in education? Harrsch calls RSS the next killer app for education, specifying that she “would define a killer application as a program that provides the capability for an average person to use technology to solve every day problems and enrich their lives.” Richardson seems to be of the same mind, entitling a chapter of his book (Blog, Wikis, and Podcasts) “RSS: The New Killer App for Educators”. Why are these experts so high on RSS? Well, the benefits of simplifying research and getting updates sent to a learner/educator are obvious. But when further educational opportunities are explored, that’s when things get interesting. Harrsch gives an example of a teacher that finds a useful website and e-mails colleagues to share ideas for classroom use. What could the same teacher do with a blog and RSS feeds?

"If, instead, you post your finds with your ideas for implementation to a Web log equipped with RSS generation capability, you provide a unique information source that can be accessed by thousands of teachers like you that are looking for ways to improve their learning environments. In essence, you have helped to establish an online community of practice specific to teachers of social studies."

The advantage in the second example is that the teacher is accessing and enriching the Read/Write Web; others can learn from that teacher’s work, can comment on his/her blog extending a dialogue, and so on. Not only that, but it’s truly a worldwide opportunity – did I mention that Google Reader has a translator that can make feeds readable in a number of languages?

Will Richardson has pointed out some big pluses to RSS feeds as pertains to teachers and student work in the aforementioned book (as well as on weblogg-ed.com). If a teacher is trying to follow classrooms full of students who are each blogging, it would make sense to use feeds to only view when a blog is updated. Also, Richardson says he has been able to go completely paperless through the use of Weblogs and RSS feeds – I still could not do this in my school yet, but the possibility is intriguing. Furthermore, in what almost seems like an aside in his book, Richardson suggests that RSS could be a fortunate thing for the “lack of media and information literacy skills students have” – which to me would suggest that using RSS feeds may drastically change the way we look at student research, online literacy and student-directed learning.

Personally, I was more than a little perplexed with the information literacy skills displayed by the majority of students in some of my courses. Using RSS feeds should allow me to give them an easy outlet for new avenues of information. When I start one of my next courses, I will give students a choice of topics relating to a novel we will be reading later in the course. Students will be directed to choose three of them, sign up for a feed reader account, and use search terms to start collecting data. When we get to the assignment a month or so later, hopefully they will have some great choices of information to pick from. I think this will be a grand learning experience for both my students and myself, and we’ll see if it works the way Richardson suggests.

What other uses could be found for RSS and student learners? Here are a few general ideas:

· RSS in combination with class Wikis = timely information shared by peers in an engaging, learner-ownership community of learners
· Direct students to RSS feeds when information needs to be really timely – if used properly, feeds can provide learners with extra updated data that may not be found as easily if they’re simply using mainstays Google and Wikipedia.
· Get creative! If you’re using Google Reader, for example (not a bad ideas to use a web-based feed reader so students can access it anywhere), can students find useful info originally written in a different language? Once students (and teacher) are fairly comfortable with RSS, what can be done with merging RSS feeds, remixing, what-have-you?

Finally, there are clearly some positive aspects to using RSS feeds in different educational ways. What about any negative aspects or problems? Armelle O’Neal listed a few potential minuses at http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/manageinfo/rss.mspx :

1. RSS feeds provide no history, which means that although you always get the newest information, you can easily miss an article of interest to you if you don’t check the feeds for a few days (when you’re on vacation, for example).
2. RSS feeds are a bandwidth waster because they automatically download RSS files (usually hourly) to check for updates and changes.
3. RSS feeds are complicated to set up. As people hear about RSS and understand its value, they also become disappointed by the fact that it is not as easy as surfing the Web.
4. RSS content doesn’t lend itself to search. Many search engines include RSS feeds but they struggle to identify which information is new and, hence, greatly limit the value of search operations on this type of content.
5. RSS feeds usually only show an abridged version of the content, which can be cryptic and may require you to open your Web browser to see the full article.

Number one could be a problem, but as long as we’re using it during the school year, it shouldn’t be a biggie. The second point may be a problem, but I don’t know yet if it will hinder student use. Problem three I disagree with, because it seems pretty simple to set up an RSS feed.. Number 4 doesn’t appear to be a big problem from what I’ve seen so far. Problem number 5 is not a problem to me at all; the purpose of using RSS fees is so a user doesn’t have to look at everything, and that would include seeing an abridged version, at least at first. RSS users can always create a clipping for later viewing or open up a web browser if they need to do so. We should keep in mind that O’Neal’s article was published in 2006, and it possible that the severity of some of these problems have decreased in the interim.

Overall, none of the potential problems above outweighs the great opportunities for educators and learners in using RSS feeds. I haven’t even begun to discuss some of the possibilities of using RSS feeds when using Technorati or FeedBurner, but this blog is becoming a little long-winded. How about I just leave you with a promotional quote from Technorati’s site:

“If Google is the world’s reference library, Technorati is becoming its coffeehouse” – Time magazine
Please excuse me, I need to go get some coffee.

Social Networking: Do You Know What Your Kids are Doing Right Now?

The term “social networking” for me conjures up images of upwardly mobile men and women working parties and social gatherings, handing out and collecting business cards, planning future meetings, making contacts, schmoozing amid cocktails in order to widen a valuable (often invisible) web of people who may at some point have some of the same interests and be mutually beneficial to each other.

While that “web” may still be unseen in some ways, social networking in Web 2.0 makes many of those connections much more visible than before. I’ve been on Facebook for about a year and a half now. I’ve watched and been involved in renewing connections with friends, former business associates and colleagues, and grown new friendships with former acquaintances. People don’t have to ask for my friend’s e-mail address if they can simply send them a message after finding them in my list of friend’s on Facebook. The last two concerts I attended were almost exclusively planned through Facebook contacts. In fact, the last band I saw only got back together in response to a “Reunite…” Facebook group devoted to getting the musicians back together (Reunite the Watchmen is now my favourite group on Facebook, because it has positively impacted on my life).

In my former life when I wrote about music on a regular basis, MySpace was the main social networking site for maintaining and gaining contact with artists and other music industry people. If I got a query about interviewing an artist or reviewing an album, often it would be through MySpace, where instantly I could listen to the relevant musical selection and decide whether it would be a suitable assignment for myself. In fact, Myspace can accept a lot of the responsibility for the idea that today anyone purporting to be a musical artist can now be heard everywhere at any time.

So although I had in fact been using social networking sites for my own purposes for some time, I had until recently not considered possible educational uses for the same electronic spaces. How could we use sites that seemed centred on entertainment or social purposes to help learners further their education?

It seems that many have already come up with a number of ideas in this area, including rationales for doing so. First, it’s clear that social networking sites of one sort or the other are here to stay, and students will utilize them for their own reasons. In an article entitled Scaffolding the New Social Literacies, Stephen Abram points out that not only have MytSpace and FaceBook become prominent in learners’ lives, younger kids have flocked to sites like webkinz.com and clubpenguin.com. Abrams goes on to ask an important question:

“By creating safe places where you need letters from your teacher to get online, or protecting kids by narrowing the rules, can kids ever develop the critical thinking about their identity and privacy that will be essential for success in their future?”
(http://www.sirsidynix.com/Resources/Pdfs/Company/Abram/MMIS_23.pdf)

Let’s think about this for a minute. Will learners build their own skills in maintaining privacy and security if educators disallow social networking sites in schools? Will the majority of students somehow extend their own knowledge in these areas without any guidance from teachers? I have seen no evidence that the hoped-for result will magically appear. Abrams suggests that, just like we scaffold personal knowledge of our community and our world starting in elementary school, we should scaffold tools for students to use in social networking situations right from the beginning. Makes sense to me.

If we are to be honest, social networking sites are a great example of a Web 2.0 tool that young people have already embraced; more mature lifelong learners could probably learn a lot from our students in this area. One of my students last year did an amazing presentation about her blog, which was hosted on Livejournal. If we were to look at Facebook sites as speaking directly about our students’ interests, hopes and desires, wouldn’t we be gaining a much stronger rapport with our customers/clients?

As Jason Johnson stated in his article The Case for Social Networks, “At its core, the issue is not about technology at all, but about helping students understand where the public sphere ends and the private sphere begins, how to converse in those domains, and how to be part of a community”. (http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2006/1/25/the-case-for-social-networks.html) Social networking is one of those places where students are now finding their own identity, their own voice, and their own communities. As educators, it is up to us to help them on their journey, which is often about learning in its own way, instead of sticking our heads deeper into the sand (or snow, if you are in Winnipeg like me).

At the same time, there are a number of issues which many educators have to face before we can delve into social networking with our students. First of all, how many of us can access them from school? Nings seem to be one way to go in our classes. One of the best things I’ve learned in the past two weeks (courtesy of Traci Gardner) is that Ning networks can be made private and available only to invited members (http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2008/09/social-networking-ning-thing.html). I haven’t had enough experience with Nings to give examples, but I recently joined one and will see what could be done. At any rate, a comment posted in response to Gardner’s article has got me a little worried that nings too may be blocked in schools. Mrs. Stanford wrote:

“I am in love with my ning site for my class. However, my school district which had previously approved the site has now deemed the site inappropriate due to the site bypassing the proxy that blocks sites such as youtube.”

Ouch. Social networking may be one Web 2.0 tool that requires some strong lobbying before sites are made easily available for school use. Clearly teachers and librarians are making use of nings to make valuable connections, share resources, and extend learning communities. Just check out some of the groups connected through http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/ and you should get the idea that there is already something out there for almost everyone.

I’ll leave the last word to Stephen Abram, who wrote an appealingly eloquent introduction to his article on Scaffolding the New Social Literacies:

“OMG – reading literacy and numeracy, civic literacy and all the rest. Now we’re hearing that schools must expand the teaching of information literacy, computer literacy, media literacy, critical literacy, health literacy, technacy and transliteracy. And, do it all across the curricula. Dozens of types of literacy are discussed on websites and Wikipedia. How can we possibly keep up with another one?”

Abram goes on to explain that what he calls “online social literacy” is essential because young people have already embraced social networking, many at an amazingly early age. How can we keep up with another type of literacy? Perhaps the questions should really be, How can we afford not to do so?

Blog 7 - VoiceThread and where it could take us

My mission this week was to explore a multimedia sharing site. Before I headed over to VoiceThread, I checked out a few sites extolling the virtues and explaining the uses of same site. VoiceThread seems like a mixture of a number of the Web 2.0 tools we’ve been exploring- blogs, podcasting, YouTube & TeacherTube, photosharing sites, and so on. The possibilities are almost inexhaustible, at least if it isn’t blocked by your school division (I haven’t checked yet if it is available in mine).

If you haven’t seen VoiceThread in use, the following video gives a pretty good example of some of the things you can do with it.



above from http://web2bookmarking.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-on-voicethread.html

Although the video shown above may not automatically suggest myriad educational uses to viewers, hopefully everyone can see that VoiceThread can be a greatly interactive Web 2.0 tool.

Brenda Dyck has written a nicely concise piece of writing on educational possibilities of VoiceThread, which you can read in its entirety here. Dyck makes a good point that student voice as proposed by Dewey is given a great opportunity in this kind of student work and collaboration. For me, Dyck’s suggestion that VoiceThread allows for differentiation is also a strong one; students can speak, listen, view, type comments, and draw with the doodler all in one spot. The kind of integration that lets so many skills, strategies and learning styles all come into play at once seems like a forward move for the technology-driven world we are inheriting.

The kind of student engagement many of us work for daily may have found a friend here with this kind of multimedia application. It would seem hard not to be engaged; using VoiceThread almost seems like play, doesn’t it? You can doodle on a picture, zoom in and out at will to look closer or get the big picture, listen to range of voices (and replay them if you need to). Here’s a young student’s VoiceThread on global warming and its effect on polar bears.



As you can see and hear, the girl who created the presentation has received comments from a far-flung oceanographer, a teacher abroad, friends, family members, and of course many other young people. What’s interesting to me on this site is that there are fruitful comments and silly ones; clearly some people are taking it seriously and some are not, and at leas one is critical. Putting one’s work out there, even if you are a young person, seems to entail being prepared for all kinds of feedback. But that’s what’s good about VoiceThread, postings are meant to be viewed and commented upon by others. The learning process does not stop at creation of a product, it continues through comments made by others (who are not necessarily teachers). Voicethread allows for a unique way of garnering reaction from anywhere and allows commenters to respond in numerous ways. Students may be able to learn something about accepting criticism and disregarding irrelevant comments.

I had some problems using Voicethread myself. I could upload pictures, doodle on them and type comments, but could not record my oral comments. My mic worked fine for other applications such as Audacity, and I worked through VoiceThread’s Help for audio, but I was still unable to record my voice for commenting purposes. Clearly I have a lot more to learn before I can use VoiceThread in the classroom. Here’s what I was working on, please imagine my best deejay voice extolling the virtues of Halloween safety with my sons as examples as you check it out.




http://voicethread.com/share/240744/

While browsing others’ VoiceThreads, I found that others’ comments were also not always audible. Sometimes they were just recorded too quietly for me to make out what they were saying, but sometimes I could not hear anything. Sound on that people had attached to videos was clear, but comments were often not audible. I wonder if anyone else has been dealing with the same problems as I have.

Nevertheless, once I get past my technical problems I think there could be a pretty wide range of uses. First, as mentioned previously, the use of VoiceThreads generally could be fantastic for student voice, student engagement, and differentiated learning. I believe that the ease of visual uploading, doodling and typing comments for almost instant response is more in tune with student expectations these days, with texting and IM occupying more and more of students’ time.

For some of my students who are reluctant to collaborate in small or large group settings, VoiceThread could allow them to voice their comments without that fear of speaking with a whole class watching and listening. I have seen this work when using PhotoStory in the past; students had a lot of fun recording their voice even when they were scared witless by the idea of speaking out loud in class. If this kind of multimedia application were used consistently, especially in more than one course, some students may gain more confidence in their own voice. In the same vein, some young learners may be more comfortable speaking into a mic than to a teacher, so VoiceThread may be able to allow educators one more way for students to show evidence of learning.

One of the easiest ways to get students involved in this sort of collaborative work is to let them browse and comment and then look at some of those threads classmates responded to. Once I iron out my kinks with VoiceThread, that’s where I will start; direct them to some initial threads to get them started, let them browse, then let the sharing and commenting on other classmates’ work. It may take me some time, but I will master VoiceThread; then the fun will begin.