Creating Voice Threads

I chose to make a that could be used as part of a lesson. In this Voice Thread, I focused on homophones --words that sound the same but have different meanings. I knew that this was a topic in which visual aids, like pictures and doodling, could help clarify confusion.

I found this week’s project to be very helpful; I can definitely envision myself using Voice Threads in my future classroom. The process of creating a Voice Thread was very user-friendly but there still seem to be tons of great features that would be helpful teachers (like multiple identities on one account or being able to moderate the comments left on your thread). Once I got my account up and running it was smooth sailing. I used FlckrCC to grab some images for my thread about homophones, plugged in my microphone and I was ready to go. Like other commenters on the Voice Thread about doodling, I too found the tool very helpful. In my Voice Thread I used doodling to differentiate between the two homophones I had up on the slide. I hoped that this would highlight the fact that I was pronouncing two different words. I did make several mistakes while recording my comment, thankfully erasing these errors was super easy!

The examples posted on the class blog as well as the Voice Threads I looked at on our Google reader served up some inspiration on how Voice Threads might be used in my future class. As I said before, creating a voice thread was very easy to do. I think that with some guidance even the youngest students could contribute to a Voice Thread. I thought the idea of combining all of the class’ ideas onto a single voice thread, like the Federal Holiday Voice Thread, would be a nice way to showcase student work. Plus, Voice Threads are easy to share. I’m sure that many parents and relatives across the country would be interested in looking at student created Voice Threads. The examples of compiling different Voice Threads in wiki’s has the potential for really interesting possibilities. Students could collaborate in Voice Thread wiki’s with students across the hall or across the country. Because Voice Threads are so versatile the possibilities are endless!