Katelyn

media type="custom" key="25665738" width="284" height="284"

At first I was afraid of using Voicethread because I am absolutely terrible with technology. However, when I got into the program and began to explore its features, I found it to be very user-friendly. I think this would be a great publishing program for students to use for their own stories because it fosters ownership and creativity by allowing them to bring their story to life using illustrations and voiceovers for their characters.

I believe that Voicethread would be a great program to use in my future classroom if I ever have my students create group stories. Each student could take on the role of one of the characters in the group's story and voiceover the dialogue for his/her character. I think this program gives students the opportunity to be creative and take pride in their published product. Also, by giving each member of the group a role and responsibility for the voicethread, the teacher is teaching the 21st century skill of teaming and collaboration.

I realize that you would have to be careful with privacy with your students, but I liked how the program gave you the opportunity to make your voicethread public because it provides the writer with a genuine audience. If anything, you could just have the students share their voicethreads with one another or possibly with another class. I believe students put more effort into a writing assignment (any assignment for that matter) when they know that they are going to have a real audience, and this program provides that feature for them.

Another element of this project that I enjoyed was that we had to explore the websites for ourselves, both Voicethread and the wikispace. Personally, as I mentioned before, I am terrified of new technology, so that component of the assignment intimidated me. However, I quickly learned that sometimes you learn more through self-exploration. I was clueless about how to embed the voicethread into the wikispace, so I asked a classmate for assistance, and his explanation was very helpful when it came time for me to embed my voicethread. By having students self-navigate or work together with classmates in assignments, the teacher encourages critical thinking and teaming and collaboration among students.

Overall, I enjoyed this project, and I believe that Voicethread will be a great option for my students to publish their writing in a fun and non-traditional through the use of technology.