My 6 year old daughter and I made this Voice Thread today while visiting her Grandparents. I got the idea of recording consecutive video into Voice Thread while watching this fantastic Advent Calendar Greeting from St. Augustine’s College in Sydney, Australia. Until then I had mostly thought of Voice Thread as a way to combine static pictures and voice. I think that being able to include video in a Voice Thread makes it a much more flexible and interesting product.
Even more exciting (in my opinion) is that the entire story was filmed using the Voice Thread App in my 2nd generation 8 GB iPod Touch. I have been wanting to try this App for a while and when my daughter started to create a story with her pictures I jumped at the chance to try it out. There is a lot to like about this App, for instance:
- Once you are logged into your Voice Thread account the App uploads the video you shoot directly to your account and bypasses the device hard drive. When your iPod only has 8 GB of storage this is a big deal.
- The interface for the mobile App is really intuitive and easy to navigate.
- The App captures both video and audio really easily. In my opinion this makes it an excellent way to gather evidence for e-portfolios.
- Once you are finished filming and the App has uploaded all the footage to your Voice Thread account it easy to access the ‘My Voice’ panel and re-arrange or delete the footage. This makes it easy to delete mistakes or, even better, celebrate them by moving them to the end and calling them bloopers (don’t miss the outtakes in our little story :-))
Cute VoiceThread! I agree that the fewer steps involved the more likely that teachers and students are going to try tech and be successful. Especially when the results are so great. I’ll have to add this to my list of things to try/do over the break!
Cheers,
Claire
Thanks for all the recent comments Claire. As much as I really write on this blog for myself it’s nice to know that someone else is reading it as well. I should mention that we have a VoiceThread for Education account at school which makes it easy for me to set up student accounts, and quite a lot of our students already come to school with iPod Touch devices. I figure all I have to do is get them to install the VT app on the devices and they will all have a great way to capture evidence of their learning in their pockets.
I received an iPad to use in my classroom just a couple of weeks before the Christmas break. This app was one of the first I loaded onto it for my grade one class to use but we have yet to use it. After reading this post I must get this app being used by my class.
Karen @lirenmanlearns
Also, thank you for commenting on my student Liliana’s goal to improve her math. I do need to find out about world Maths day.
Hi Karen. I really liked your class blog. I am helping our Grade 1 teacher set up a class blog and have sent her your as an example. I hope you and your class will blog about using the iPad in class. I would like to get some for our elementary students as they seem to have amazing educational potential.
I should also mention that World Maths Day has now evolved into World Spelling and World Science Day as well. So there is something for everyone.