This is a guest post by educator and VoiceThreader, Dr. Jaimie Hoffman
The Idea
Last summer I was inspired to dream about what could be possible if I could connect my students with students in another country in a common learning experience using technology. This was an exciting possibility both because gaining international perspectives is a key pillar of my institution and because I think it is an important outcome of the undergraduate experience. I thought about collaborating with friend from high school, Mario Perez, who now teaches English in Japan; I thought he might be up for a challenge and ready to color outside of the box.
Getting Started
Mario quickly agreed to work with me on this adventure. First, we discussed and finalized what we wanted our students gain from this experience and established measurable outcomes. We then decided that the module would involve students from my Group Communication Course working with students from his Intermediate English Course to learn about diversity, specifically Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, together and…. teach each other along the way. An additional outcome for Mario’s students was to get practice speaking and listening to English.
With the outcomes finalized, we looked at what digital tool might best meet our needs. How the heck can we get students living 5400 miles apart and 17 hours time difference to work together? Sure, we could have used a static, text-based discussion forum, but we identified VoiceThread as the best option for creating a humanized experience.
The Module
We created the module itself including, instructor information, context, outcomes, instructions, VoiceThread links, and a reflection form, on a web page using Populr.me. We divided our students into twelve small groups with about five students from CI and three students from APU. It was important to us that all voices could be heard in the conversation and with over eighty students, it would be counteractive to have large class discussions.
The process of putting together the module was fairly smooth although we encountered differences between educational and cultural practices in the US and Japan that had some implications on our module. For instance, something as small as how we refer to our students in our videos (e.g. Japanese students, US students) became a focal point of our conversations because we realized that we did not want to offend students who may not be Japanese but who live in Japan. While the same applied to the students in the US, tensions between Japan and Korea gave the issue greater prominence. In essence, Mario and I learned about diversity as we prepared this experience about diversity.
The VoiceThread consisted of a series of slides, which were a mixture of Mario and I narrating and posing discussion questions. The students were given three due dates: by the first date, they were to post their initial response to our questions and pose a question to their peers in the other country, by the second date they were to respond to their peers’ questions and by the third date they were to submit their responses to a reflection.
Impact/Student Perceptions
Students responded positively to the module:
**–**82% of APU students who responded to the reflection survey reported they agreed or strongly agreed with the fact that the module helped them practice English.
**–**89% of all students who responded to the survey indicated that they strongly agreed or agreed with the fact that it was exciting to work alongside students in another country.
The asynchronous nature of VoiceThread allowed students to reflect on their culture and the questions about another culture. One student said, “I had the chance to collect my thoughts on how I truly see my culture and having to explain why. It was nice to reflect.” The module introduced students to differences in ways that a textbook or class discussion probably could not achieve. This student’s reflection is a great example of this: “I learned that what is normal here can be very different in other countries. We are used to diversity here and experience a lot of different cultures, but in Japan the ethnicity of their people is pretty constant and unchanging. Another thing I learned is Japan has a lot of power distance in its culture.”
We plan to repeat this module again with slight modifications:
**–**Allow more time for planning: it took a lot of time collaborating to align outcomes, creating the presentation, securing student permissions, and explaining the module to students… and that’s just the work that took place before the module occurred.
**–**Add introductions and follow up to facilitate breaking the ice: we realized that our students could have benefitted from a few slides with “getting to know you” activities especially since the students in Japan began the module at a disadvantage with regard to their English language abilities.
**–**Provide opportunities for continued connections: many students told us they wished that their connections with students abroad could continue beyond the module. In the future, we plan to provide a facilitated post-module activity using VoiceThread to continue conversations.
**–**Structure more space between deadlines for enhanced engagement: The tight timeline and specific post requirements we used for participation may have stifled the conversation. Next time we plan to use less specifics on number and dates of post requirements and greater emphasis on the quality of conversation
**–**Recommend students to use microphones: Language was a definite challenge in this activity (which was also part of the learning process) for all involved; volume was an element of the process that could be controlled with use of microphones.
It was definitely a great learning experience for everyone involved and was invigorating to see how this can help us imagine possibilities for future connections.
Want to hear Mario and I talking about our experience with Michelle Pacansky-Brock? View our Hangout on Air on Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. or check out the recording that will archived in the same location. We will also be presenting our experience at the upcoming ET4Online conference in Dallas, Texas.
Dr. Jaimie Hoffman is an Instructional Technologist and part-time faculty member at CSU Channel Islands. Jaimie has taught in blended, online and face-to-face format to undergraduate and graduate students. You can learn more about her at http://jaimiehoffman.com
Would you like to connect with an author for World Read Aloud Day? Your students can add their voices to a collaborative VoiceThread with author Kelly Young-Silverman and illustrator erin the great for their book Man in the Moon!
About Man in the Moon:
“Man in the Moon is a beautifully illustrated story about an inquisitive little girl who reaches for the moon and finds a friend. This sweet rhyming tale follows our young heroine on a magical journey as she learns that any acquaintance can easily become a friend and no matter how small you may feel (especially compared to the great big moon) you are special to someone.”
We embedded the VoiceThread version of the book below but you can also use this link to open the VoiceThread:
Your students can add their voices to this VoiceThread and even ask the author and illustrator questions about the book! Please leave your questions on the first slide and add your narration on the rest of the slides.\
The authors also sell signed copies of Man in the Moon from on their website: www.evieandknoxstories.com
For other World Read Aloud Day ideas, check out these posts:
Read alouds are a staple in many classrooms around the world. We know that read alouds can be beneficial for both older and younger students. Creating a VoiceThread read aloud can be a wonderful learning experience for all students and a great way to assess reading ability for their teachers.
However, listening to students reading a published work by an author they love on a VoiceThread is tricky when we consider copyright and fair use rules. The good news is that you don’t need to violate copyright laws to create VoiceThread read alouds. One way to get around copyright issues is to have students read original works that they write themselves by using storybird and VoiceThread together!
Instead of using read alouds to assess reading ability alone, why not have give your students experience both writing and reading their own work? If you want to give it a try, we broke down the process into 16 easy steps.
STEP 11: To upload those images to a VoiceThread, click “create”.
STEP 12: Click “Add Media” then search “My Computer” for the images.
STEP 13: Once the images are processed, click “comment”.
STEP 14: Select either audio or webcam as your commenting method, record your narration and click save.
STEP 15: In the upper-left corner, click on the menu then click “share”.
STEP 16: When the sharing window opens, click on the “basic” tab, then click “copy link” then paste it on your website or in an email to share it.
That’s all there is to it!
If you create on original read aloud using storybird and VoiceThread, let us know. We’d love to see your work, so feel free to paste your link in the comment section below!
Connecting your students with other classes around the globe for World Read Aloud Day can be tough. Scheduling a live skype session with a school in a different time zone can be a deal-breaker for what would otherwise be a wonderful learning experience for your students. Even when you overcome the scheduling issues, technology can fail to cooperate. Sometimes their mic isn’t working, sometimes your bandwidth ruins the idea, sometimes the server goes down or your principal decides to have a fire drill halfway through.
The good news is that you can still execute these ideas and not have to worry about the problems if you use VoiceThread for an asynchronous collaboration. At VoiceThread, we understand the issues surrounding global collaborations and we want to help you avoid the pitfalls of synchronous scheduling, high-pressure troubleshooting and bad timing.
We would like to empower you to create rich, memorable learning experiences like this:\
If you want to connect with other schools for collaborative read alouds, there are a few options. If both teachers have a Pro Educator License, they can share editing rights to a single VoiceThread. Even if one or more of the teachers is using our free trial account, you can still collaborate. Below you will find the steps you need to get your collaboration off the ground.
6. Share your VoiceThread with the other teacher. In the “secure” tab, search your contacts for the other teacher and click on them. Then click “edit” and click the blue share button.
7. The other teacher will be notified that you shared the VoiceThread and they can upload and edit it with their own students.
8. Finished!
*** Collaboration between free accounts***
1. Login to your VoiceThread account.
2. Create your VoiceThread either by using your webcam to record students reading, or by uploading images from the book and having your students record audio comments for each image.
3. Ask your collaboration partner to email you the screenshots from their book. (Free trial users cannot share editing rights, so one of you will need to do all the uploading for both groups)
4. Click “share”
5. Click on the “Basic” tab and then click “copy link”. You can paste the link in an email and send it to your collaboration partner.
6. Your collaboration partner can have their students record their portion of the read aloud as audio or webcam comments.
7. Finished!
Let us know if you have any questions or comments about creating an asynchronous read aloud collaboration using VoiceThread. If you need help connecting with another school, let us know and we can help.
We would love to see your work and share it with the VoiceThread community! You can share your read alouds here: VoiceThread Read Alouds
This is a guest post by Eoin Lenihan, a pedagogy lecturer and VoiceThreader.
Students at the University of Augsburg recently took part in a weekend seminar on Evidence-Based Teaching (EBT). One of the key areas of agreement between John Hattie @VisibleLearning and Robert Marzano @MarzanoResearch, the two most influential voices in EBT, is that feedback has one of the most significant teacher-attributed effects on student achievement. The problem with feedback, as Hattie (2009,4) points out, is that the vast majority (80%) of feedback that a student receives in school is from a classmate, and the majority of that (80%) is incorrect. In our seminar, we worked as a group to assess how to deliver better quality teacher and peer feedback. This tied in neatly with another strand of our seminar, the lack of EdTech in the German classroom. VoiceThread was the logical option for enhancing the quality of student feedback while integrating user-friendly EdTech.
Feedback is not simply positive reinforcement, patting a student on the back and saying “nice work”. Praise is welcome but quality feedback is explicitly related to helping a student form an awareness of where he currently stands in relation to realising academic goals and what steps need to be taken next. Essential to feedback is goal-setting, making criteria and rubrics clear and understood and evaluating where a student is in relation to these. Hattie (2011, 5) breaks it down into three steps – “Where am I going?”, “How am I going?” and “Where to next?” One simple method of quality feedback that fulfils these steps is @GeoffPetty’s (2009, 90) “Medal and Mission” routine. A “medal” is awarded where a student meets a goal or where a specific element of his work meets a designated element of the rubric. A “mission” is simply a specific target to help the student continue to improve his performance in relation to the set goal and rubric. We experimented with this method using VoiceThread.
Students from the University of Augsburg, Germany give structured feedback using VoiceThread
We designed a poster project rubric and placed a photograph of a semi-completed poster by “Thomas” on our VoiceThread canvas. Students were tasked to read the grading rubric and then leave a VoiceThread comment on Thomas’s work. Our first attempt allowed us to reflect on how we give feedback and our conclusions were revealing. Most feedback was positive reinforcement and there was little direct reference to Thomas’s poster project rubric. Further, comments went on too long, students became lost in their thought processes and there was a great deal of repetition. In short, our feedback was of little academic use to Thomas. Had we not used VoiceThread, these deficiencies would not have been clear to the students and visible to me as the teacher. Like Hattie said, poor Thomas got lots of feedback, just not much of it useful. As a result, we brainstormed how to give Thomas a better chance at academic success.
Students brainstorm (using a chalk-talk) how to improve our feedback method
The group decided that to maximise the potential of VoiceThread as a tool for quality feedback, input from students would need to be short. We chose to limit each person to one minute per comment. Comments would focus on academic feedback only by giving each one “medal” and one “mission” per feedback session. These would be strictly worded and linked to the attached rubric: “I am awarding you a medal for…” and “Your mission is…”. This allows the student receiving the feedback to easily comprehend where he needs to go next by integrating these “missions” into his work. Having agreed upon these guidelines, we once more gave Thomas feedback and the results were transformative. Comments were focused, brief and criteria-driven. Without doubt, Thomas will now achieve a better grade in this project and, more importantly, have a deeper understanding of how improved academic performance is related to goals.
Having finished our experimentation, we awarded “medals” to VoiceThread. Here are some of the reasons the students will be using it in their future classrooms.
It can be used on any device with an internet connection.
As the teacher is the administrator, data is safe and comments are moderated.
It provides different ways to communicate and it creates a “visual dialogue”.
It is simple to use and wastes no time to set up.
It is fun!
It is a totally different way to think about feedback.
It makes learning visible to parents and it keeps them involved.
It gives parents a deeper understanding of the learning process and not just a grade at the end of the year.
It allows experts from all around the world to comment on student work.
It can be used as a means of collaborative planning for teachers.
It can be used as an excellent introductory tool for student-teachers at a school.
Eoin Lenihan (@EoinLenihan) is a lecturer of Pedagogy at the University of Augsburg, Germany. He has taught at the International School of Augsburg and the Bavarian International School. For more see: www.eoinlenihan.com.
When Matthew Phillips, a business instructor from Wake Forest University, learned one morning that his evening class would be canceled, he turned to VoiceThread as a “just-in-time solution” to hold class anyway.
Even though he’d never done it before, he quickly created a VoiceThread, tweeted the link to his students, and then actively participated with them that evening. “Since Wake Forest University has a campus license,” explained Mr. Phillips, “we didn’t really have any problems. Only 1 of my 90 students had trouble, and his problem was fixed in about 40 seconds.”
Mr. Phillips has held three canceled classes with VoiceThread, and he’s found that “students get the experience of a real conversation better than with any other single solution.” The majority of his students say that they prefer using VoiceThread instead of a simple recorded lecture when they can’t be in class. Now that he has some experience, he says he’ll also use VoiceThread for a larger variety of activities, including “flipped classroom” discussions and bonus content for students.
School closures have affected students of all ages, and some districts have already exceeded their allotted snow days for the year. With ever-growing technology initiatives and one-to-one programs, however, not all of those schools lost that class time. Several school districts across the US, including some in Indiana, Minnesota, and New Jersey, have held virtual school days. Read more here. VoiceThread is a perfect fit for those days that you can’t be in class. Students can participate whenever and wherever it’s convenient for them, they can collaborate and ask questions around the material, and since there are no time constraints, you can require participation from each and every student. See an example in the VoiceThread Library.
Winter is not over, and there may be more snow days to come, but you don’t have to lose a full day of instruction. VoiceThread lets you be there even when you’re not!
This is a guest post by Susan Bertolino, University Professor and VoiceThreader.
Online education is a part of the college experience. More departments are choosing to include online classes in their course schedule. Many instructors are trained to use Web Ex as a mode of conducting synchronous learning, in which college students meet with their instructor via the internet for class discussion, questions, outlines of assignments and other necessary components of active learning. Yet problems arise with this method. Some students have difficult schedules that cannot allow for certain meeting times. Some students have quirky home Wi-Fi connections, so they do their online work at the college computer lab, where they sit next to other students who use the lab to check Facebook and go on Tumblr instead of doing coursework. How does the online instructor address these problems when the emails come in, saying I work every night, I have to pick up my kids, the lab is crazy busy at that time, my roommate uses the computer for his online class at that time—the list goes on.
Our program decided to address these issues by dispensing with synchronous learning entirely. We use Voicethread as our one common tool, along with Temple University’s Blackboard system that is available for all instructors and students. The advantages are enormous:
* Students choose when they will log into the assignment along with the background material necessary to complete their work.
* Students can choose to record or videotape any comments. (They can also write their comments, but I personally discourage it as I use Voicethread for the interactive benefits.)
* Second language learners can practice speaking their English in a non-threatening environment.
* Voicethread builds community. Once students get used to using the tool, they begin to relax and open up. They see each other online, so they feel they are building relationships with each other, just as they would in an in-person classroom.
* Students who refuse to talk in class feel less pressure when they need to speak, as they are discussing the text on their own terms. Often the shyest students excel with Voicethread.
* Students can comment directly on assignments and powerpoints.
* With a free account, students can create 5 voicethreads. Some students choose this instead of commenting on the comment Voicethread. It is up to the instructor whether he or she is comfortable with separate voicethreads, depending on the assignment.
* The tool is easy to use. Common glitches may come from an outdated flash player; bad Wi-Fi or too many people are accessing the same voicethread.
I use Voicethread with my online and in person classes, as I believe in using educational technology in the classroom. Too many people think of technology as consumption along with instant gratification. It is one thing to write a tweet. It is another to respond to an assignment with page numbers from the text along with personal insights into specific information. Good technology keeps our minds active. Once the student gets used to the format, it all works out. By the final assignment, I don’t get any email that tells me the tool is inaccessible. They know what to do.
I’m including some work from my fall semester of 2014. One combines one of my in-person classes with my online class. I created this assignment as a response to Stud Terkel’s Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. The first Voicethread assignment asked the students to interview a full-time worker; the second section asked them to reply more about the book Working by Studs Terkel. I deleted some of the answers for the sake of brevity. I also included an interview with my husband as an entertaining way to model the first half of the assignment.
The second assignment pertains to The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Only my online students participated. It is based on a powerpoint I created on some of the chapters in the texts. Students were asked to comment on key images, using specific terminology from the text.
You will see that Voicethread allows for a lot of teacher commentary to explain the powerpoint. I alternated from comments I created for my summer class to new ones I made for my fall semester one. Both voicethread assignments show how some students choose to use the web camera while others preferred the audio recording. For the powerpoint assignment, I gave them the option to choose; however, for the interview, I asked the students to videotape their interview unless they had a reason not to do so, and that problem needed to be discussed with me.
I hope I have given an overview of how Voicethread works in online classes along with the more traditional classroom format. Speaking for myself, it has opened up my teaching tremendously. Students left the course with better critical thinking skills and a sense of accomplishment on how to use educational software. Voicethread creates a positive teaching tool for any class environment. I encourage all educators to give it a go!
Susan Bertolino has taught in the Intellectual Heritage Program for the past ten years at Temple University. Before moving to Philadelphia, she was a bilingual classroom and resource teacher for K-8 in Chicago–Spanish is her second language. She loves using educational technology in various modes as she thinks it addresses the three primary learning styles: auditory, visual and tactile.
This unconference is for educators who work at the intersection of literacy and technology. At VoiceThread, we believe in conversations, not presentations, and the unconference model embodies that belief. At Novel Ideas, educators will work together to discuss different perspectives on teaching and assessing literacy in the year 2015 and beyond.
Details
VoiceThread is partnering with LitWorld, the global literacy non-profit, to bring you this event. The goal is to make connections and share innovative ideas about how to improve reading and writing instruction in our blended, hybrid, or online courses.
If you’ve ever been to an EdCamp or any other unconference, you know that the topics of conversation will be designed by you, the participants. Pre-conference planning for Novel Ideas with take place virtually using our planning VoiceThread to pitch ideas and discuss potential topics of conversation.
On the day of the conference, we will hit the ground running. The beautiful living room and loft area in the Flatiron Hotel will comfortably accommodate 75 participants as we huddle up for our breakout conversations.
This event is also part of the build up to World Read Aloud Day, LitWorld’s special global event advocating for reading as a human right.
We encourage all participants to contribute to our Read Aloud VoiceThread Collection in the weeks leading up to Novel Ideas and World Read Aloud Day.
Space at Novel Ideas limited, so if you sign up but can not attend please let us know so we can give your spot to someone on our waiting list.
Each month for the 2014-2015 school year, we will be accepting submissions for a “VoiceThread of the Month”. Each month, we will ask for an entry based on a different theme along with a link to submit the work when it’s complete.
If your submission is chosen as our winner, and your school doesn’t already have a license, you will win a free license for a year!
The winning selection for each month will also be added to a special section in our digital library so everyone can see the great work you do.
For January, the theme is:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Do you discuss the impact Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had on American history?
Do you discuss the civil rights movement with your students?
Do your students study the “I Have a Dream” speech?
Then turn those discussions into a VoiceThread and submit it using the link below.
Here’s how it works:
The submission can be either student or teacher created.
We are looking for conversations, not just presentations.
The VoiceThread will be judged on these 3 criteria:
1. Comment Quality– all comments should add value to the content of conversation.
2. Visuals– all images/documents/videos should be appropriate, interesting, and properly sourced.
3. Comment Quantity– more people engaged in the conversation means more points of view.
If you have an Ed.VoiceThread license and have opted to allow anyone to view it in the past, you know that Comment Moderation was enabled for you automatically. After receiving your feedback about the needs of students and teachers, we have updated that policy.
Now, Comment Moderation will not be enabled automatically if you choose to allow anyone to view and comment. There is only one time that Comment Moderation will be enabled automatically, and that is if you opt to publish your VoiceThread to the Browse page. (Learn more here)
Comment Moderation is a powerful tool for assessment, for students who are hesitant to comment if other students can see their work, and for simply making sure that all comments are on-topic and appropriate before allowing your audience to see them. Learn more about Comment Moderation here.
Students from the University of Augsburg, Germany give structured feedback using VoiceThread
Students brainstorm (using a chalk-talk) how to improve our feedback method
School closures have affected students of all ages, and some districts have already exceeded their allotted snow days for the year. With ever-growing technology initiatives and one-to-one programs, however, not all of those schools lost that class time. Several school districts across the US, including some in Indiana, Minnesota, and New Jersey, have held virtual school days. 
