More Practical Experience with VoiceThread
Teacher Challenge #2:
Ok, on to my second hurdle – the numbers. I would like to use this with my 4th-5th grade music class. I have 186 students. I’ve talked to other educators who have used VoiceThread and the word on the street is that practically speaking, you shouldn’t get more than 20 students commenting on a thread. I plan on dividing up my class into team of about 15. Each team will need a separate thread. Yikes! It’s a good thing I’m checking into all this. My free Voicethread account will only allow me to create 3 threads. It’s too late in the school year to beg for an educator’s account, so I think I will pay for the “Pro” account for one month, which will allow me to set up unlimited threads. It will allow me to export the threads into a movie format. Perfect. Now I’ll have a packaged example to show administrators…Oh, the art of persuasion.
Teacher Challenge # 3:
The third challenge will certainly be the settings for this Web 2.0 tool. It’s pretty straightforward, but I think I better do a couple test runs after I’ve purchased the Pro account. For now, I’ll make up a mock example of how I think a team’s thread will look during the first and second steps of the project. (Upload a picture of your instrument, begin commenting on your teammates pictures - Which type of instrument do you think it is and why?)
As far as settings go, I plan on selecting “moderate comments” so that I can act as a human filter for my students. I don’t like that it will slow down their interaction, but I think it’s wise in this environment.
Great job!
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