VoiceThread Article

I found an article on www.edutopia.org about a teacher who has encorportated the web tool VoiceThread into his classroom. Bill Ferriter is a 6th grade social studies and language arts teacher. He wanted to engage the students on a different level and decided to "steal" some of their online minutes. I think that this is an excellent example of how the internet is a powerful tool. He started using VoiceThread so that his students could interact on a whole new level. He describes the feed back he got, "you don't have the loud one or the popular one. they can think about their comments beforehand. In the classroom conversation, there's generally one strand of conversation going at any one time, and if you're board by that particular strand, you're completely disengaged." I think his observations and assessment of the online versus classroom discussion is right on. I think that students can really feel comfortable saying things when they don't have a group of their peers staring at them. I also beleive that it benefits the student when he or she has time to formulate a response instead of having to be "on the spot".

This program has an educators section that is safe for students and private for the specific class. No one not in the class can respond or contact the members. This is a great saftey net and I feel that this would encourage many teacher and schools to utilize the program. It would also make parents feel much better about it.

Weir, L. (2008). VoiceThread extends the classroom with interactive multimedia albums. Edutopia: What Works in Public Schools. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/voicethread-interactive-multimedia-albums