VoiceThread

Well - it’s a new term, a new year and all that.  Hope you’ve had a great Christmas and a bit of a rest.  Waiting for me in my pigeon hole this morning was a copy of Primary Choice - a seemingly advertising driven magazine full of KS1 & 2 resources for the Primary classroom -  it’s the first time I’ve seen it.  Anyway - there was a very nice little article in there from a guy called John Sutton.  He points to a marvelous site/application called VoiceThread.  John said that it is going to be the most common “have you seen this?” education resourcen of the year.  So I am simply setting the ball rolling by mentioning it here!

VoiceThread calls itself an online media album.  The idea being that you can upload an image, document or a video and then add a commentary (audio or text) to the item you have uploaded.  But it doesn’t end there.  Other users can register and add their own thoughts and comments too.

It looks fantastic as a simple resource for thoughts aroung pretty much anything!  I talked earlier about asking “What’s in a picture?” and this would be a great extension of that activity.  Instead of, or, probably better, as well as, discussing the image children could go to our audio area and record what they are thinking.  I know there will be many other ways you can use this and I look forward to working it out!  Have a look at it and see if you agree with John Sutton about this one.

Why let our students blog?

A while back Rachel Boyd wrote about a video she has posted on teachertube. It’s called ‘Why Let Our Students Blog?’ and it addresses exactly what the title suggests. Now it doesn’t give lots of lengthy evidence into the benefits of blogging - it’s more an introduction probably designed to inspire and enthuse people about them - but it’s worth a watch and it has certainly given me some useful words to use as I think about why I want to get the children at my school blogging.

Download Video: Posted by rachelboyd at TeacherTube.com.

The video also, for me, brings up a whole load of questions about the use of teachertube! I suppose it will stick around But it makes me cringe slightly. In the same way that godtube made me cringe. If I ever get round to making any videos I’ll stick to youtube.

Common Craft

In my quest to find a reason to use blogging / wikis / etc for educational reasons I have stumbled across Common Craft. They make a video animation series called “… in Plain English”. They describe how to do things in, you guessed it, plain English. They are pretty handy. Not so much for my quest to use this all to teach the kids in my class but a useful place to send people who are new to this kind of thing. The following one is an example - it’s about blogs. And it’s in plain English!