Voicethread

This week I decided to post on Voicethread.com.  I really like this tool for sharing student work with a more global audience.  I actually used Voicethread with my second graders giving them an opportunity to show the books they checked out from the library and explain why they checked it out.  This came after a lesson on "making connections" with books.  I have some of those posted on my school blog.  The experience for them was as much listening to themselves as it was anything else.  I didn't really think about the fact that most of them had no idea how they sounded.  This gave me the idea to use it to practice reading fluency.  I can upload the pages of a story and have students read each page.  You have to change the settings but they can easily be posted to your blog or web page for everyone to view and listen to.  I really like the ability for students to interact with the topics posted also.  I used my own log in for students and they added their voices but you can add different identities for your students to reference when making comments.  The only problem with this is, only one student can be on at a time.  If you pay for and create a education account, students are able to comment at the same time.  It's too late in the year for that now but I plan to explore that further for next school year.   There are tons of ideas on the site to help you get ideas for using Voicethread and you can also browse to get ideas.  It's also very helpful that there are tutorials that you can subscribe to, available right on the site to learn different features for the program.  They have also released a free mobile app for voicethread use on-the-go.