March+29th+Article



Dabbs, Lisa Michelle. "New Teacher Boot Camp Week 2 - Using VoiceThread." //K-12 Education & Learning Innovations with Proven Strategies That Work//. The George Lucas Educational Foundation, 12 July 2011. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. .

Over the summer the class read “The Red Kayak” by Priscilla Cummings. Megan Palevich used VoiceThread as the way that her eighth grade language arts class would respond to questions about the book that she posed. Although she might have given certain deadlines, like answer the first question by July first, the second by August first and the third by September first, the students were not given a strict timeframe where they had to use VoiceThread to complete their task. Ms. Palevich recorded her questions instead of using text to ask them.

The students used VoiceThread to answer the response questions that were posed. I got the impression that they had an unspecific amount of time to complete the assignment. The students were able to either provide their answers via a video response, or an audio response, or simply typing into a text box. The students would have also been able to interact with their fellow students’ answers and respond to them.

Although not outlined specifically, it would have been most simple for Ms. Palevich to give the students a grade for participation and posting by a pre-assigned time. In additional to timeliness, should could grade the responses for content quality and length. Because they could answer in any preferred manner, the students would not have been graded on how well they used a specific aspect of the technology, like the video recording, for example.

Ms. Palevich had the ability to add onto the responses that her students gave via her own voice recording or text. The interface of VoiceThread itself is very intuitive and simple, so students should not have any difficulty in using the technology. But, if Ms. Palevich was receiving a lot of questions or complaints, there are many tutorials that she could direct her students toward. The VoiceThread website itself offers a lot of support with detailed question and answer section. There are also many YouTube videos with various types of tutorials and suggestions.