Over the past 18 months, I have been collaborating with two of our history teachers, Frank Dachille and Tim Curren, with their project to revamp our 9th and 10th History courses. This year, rather than creating a written assessment culminating the 9th grade curriculum, Frank wanted to create an assessment where student recorded their response to one of thirteen essential questions.
During our brainstorming, I showed him VoiceThread, which I believed would meet 85% of his original goals. After playing with an example project, Frank enthusiastically embraced VoiceThread to use for his assessment. For this, students had to create their reflection (2 minutes or less) and find one image that they thought best represented their idea. Students were asked to add their image and record their comment, either via text or voice.
For the most part, the students were easily able to complete this assignment. As usual, there were a few glitches, but Frank has begun to brainstorm new ways to incorporate VoiceThread into projects which will occur later in the year.
It is with his permission that I share the VoiceThread which was created for this project. I hope that you enjoy.
Wow, I’m impressed. This is the most effective use of VoiceThread I’ve seen to date.
I have some questions about the execution of the project. I’m wondering how teachers and multiple students were able to upload their own images to the VoiceThread. Did they share a login or submit photos ahead of time? Were students required to respond to just one of the eleven EQ’s?
Anyway, thanks for sharing. Excellent.
Cara,
To answer your questions.
Students were only asked to complete one of the questions. They were given the choice to answer whichever one they wanted.
Secondly, we have subscribed to VoiceThread’s education accounts. This enables us to create an account for each student, which we do from grades 4 – 12. The cost of this subscription is $1 per student, so very cost effective. Students figure out how to upload their images, we don’t spend time on that.
Call it the “Facebook” Effect.
I agree that this is an excellent use of Voicethread which I think is a great tool. Couple of questions though: The blog post title indicates that voicethread was used as an “assessment tool” – how was this done in the example we see above? Did the instructor listen to the students and grade them?
Also, one of Voicethread’s unique tools is that others can insert voice or text comments into the thread I don’t see any comments above. Was this component of Voicethread used?
Just curious. Again, good work.
Michael