Voicethreads is a nifty little platform that is being used more and more where ever I participate in online seminars and conferences. This means that it definitely is a tool to explore for the classroom as well. It is basically an image based slideshow, but the real magic lies in that you can post unlimited voice inserts (comments) with each picture. Not only that, everybody else can as well! And if they do not have a microphone to leave a message, they can even leave a typed message.
The way that it has been used in seminars is mostly as an intro for everybody….as a place where we can say halo and get to know one another. But I feel that there will be a myriad of ways for us to use the platform. From story telling in the English class, to students “presenting their work/project/asssigments” with explanations and input from everybody working in their group. Here is an example:
To learn how to put a voicethread in edublogs, this video is most helpful!
We will be using Edublogger to create our blog. These instructions will be good for any wordpress powered blog as well. You may also download the powerpoint, which will give you the animations in a more step by step way. Just pause the slideshow to follow the instructions…
This site caught my interest as I was helping one of my workshop attendees to create her blog for her artworks. I wanted to find a good photo slideshow creator to showcase her pastels.
Site:www.slideroll.com Registration: Very effortless Cost: Free and Pro (Of cause I am the freebie queen!)
What can you do:
Create slideshows using pictures from your computer/Facebook/Flickr or any Url for that matter. Add music to your sideshow and embed/share it.
Creating your slideshow:
I found it to be very intuitive and I could choose music to go with my slideshow (I used beth’s bird pictures from Flickr). Their music clip was a bit short for my slideshow and it automatically repeated.
The biggest problem was, that for the life of me, I could not get it to embed into either Wordpress (where we created her blog) or Ning. I have not tried Blogger or Facebook yet.
So I downloaded the video creator that can be found on the Slideroll site and in now time at all, I converted the slideshare to video!! I could also choose new music off my computer to accompany the slideshow. Very cool indeed. I then saved the video onto my harddrive.
Now this opens up lots of possibilities for me…
I can now upload it to YouTube/Facebook/where-ever
I can cut it to a DVD to give to Beth as a present
