2 comments

1. Miguel I was absolutely thrilled to receive your “tweet” letting me know you had blogged about our VoiceThread. I am a firm believer that much of the power of web2.0 tools is their ability to provide students with a potentially global audience. I particularly like VoiceThread because it gives all of my students a voice (even the shyest child seems happy to contribute their ideas), but, most importantly, their audience can become involved in their presentation either as a participant or a commentator. In fact I believe the true power and potential of VoiceThread is in its ability to easily promote discussion, dialogue and interaction between contributors and their audience.You asked me via Twitter just what the story was behind our VoiceThread, well here it is…A few weeks ago my class and I were exploring how you could convey a strong message to an audience using powerful, carefully composed (or selected) images and a short descriptive phrase. We explored writing devices such as the use of adjectives, similes, metaphor and alliteration. We also discussed how the placement of different punctuation can change the whole meaning and delivery of a sentence. Initially we created six word statements in response to images on the following wiki page http://voicesonline.wikispaces.com/6+Word+Memoirs which was created by Lenva Shearing. The children were very aware that they were writing for a potentially global audience and spent a lot of time working on their contributions. Each child came up with several possibilities and then conferenced with a small group of their peers to decide which statement was the most powerful. The children gave each other feedback and suggestions to help revise and refine their work in order to develop their final contribution. These were posted to the wiki and the children were very proud of their efforts.I suggested that they might like to choose their own images and have a go at creating some more 6 word messages to share as a VoiceThread. I gave them the choice of sharing their contributions orally or in text. The children selected their favourite images from photos I had taken and these were uploaded to VoiceThread. We followed a similar format to the one used for the 6 word memoirs. The children worked in groups of 3 to add their contributions to the VoiceThread.So there we were with a VoiceThread of which the children were justifiably proud. However, we were still sharing with an audience of ourselves, which is great, but I knew that the true power lay in finding a wider audience.I came to the realisation this afternoon that sometimes as a teacher, we just have to go out there and find that global audience for our class. Hence the fact I sent out a message for others to visit and contribute feedback via my Twitter network. As at this stage we have had 4 educators contribute their voices and you have blogged about us here Miguel. I can’t wait until tomorrow when I can share these contributions with my class.Thank you very much for blogging about us Miguel, and in the interest of gathering an audience for my class, please feel free to visit their class blog here at http://24classspace.blogspot.com/ 😉

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2. Miguel I was absolutely thrilled to receive your “tweet” letting me know you had blogged about our VoiceThread. I am a firm believer that much of the power of web2.0 tools is their ability to provide students with a potentially global audience. I particularly like VoiceThread because it gives all of my students a voice (even the shyest child seems happy to contribute their ideas), but, most importantly, their audience can become involved in their presentation either as a participant or a commentator. In fact I believe the true power and potential of VoiceThread is in its ability to easily promote discussion, dialogue and interaction between contributors and their audience.You asked me via Twitter just what the story was behind our VoiceThread, well here it is…A few weeks ago my class and I were exploring how you could convey a strong message to an audience using powerful, carefully composed (or selected) images and a short descriptive phrase. We explored writing devices such as the use of adjectives, similes, metaphor and alliteration. We also discussed how the placement of different punctuation can change the whole meaning and delivery of a sentence. Initially we created six word statements in response to images on the following wiki page http://voicesonline.wikispaces.com/6+Word+Memoirs which was created by Lenva Shearing. The children were very aware that they were writing for a potentially global audience and spent a lot of time working on their contributions. Each child came up with several possibilities and then conferenced with a small group of their peers to decide which statement was the most powerful. The children gave each other feedback and suggestions to help revise and refine their work in order to develop their final contribution. These were posted to the wiki and the children were very proud of their efforts.I suggested that they might like to choose their own images and have a go at creating some more 6 word messages to share as a VoiceThread. I gave them the choice of sharing their contributions orally or in text. The children selected their favourite images from photos I had taken and these were uploaded to VoiceThread. We followed a similar format to the one used for the 6 word memoirs. The children worked in groups of 3 to add their contributions to the VoiceThread.So there we were with a VoiceThread of which the children were justifiably proud. However, we were still sharing with an audience of ourselves, which is great, but I knew that the true power lay in finding a wider audience.I came to the realisation this afternoon that sometimes as a teacher, we just have to go out there and find that global audience for our class. Hence the fact I sent out a message for others to visit and contribute feedback via my Twitter network. As at this stage we have had 4 educators contribute their voices and you have blogged about us here Miguel. I can’t wait until tomorrow when I can share these contributions with my class.Thank you very much for blogging about us Miguel, and in the interest of gathering an audience for my class, please feel free to visit their class blog here at http://24classspace.blogspot.com/ 😉

   Reply