Make it Online through VoiceThread
Dear fellow teachers! I know many of you always think how you can make your teaching more interesting and innovative. Sometimes you even struggle to find a suitable way of making that happen and frustratingly get back to your normal teaching practices. Well, unleash yourselves from now on with this amazing online collaborative learning tool, VoiceThread! With a variety of creative options, this tool promises you a wonderful online teaching experience. After you start using it, I won't be surprised if it eventually turns into your best buddy in teaching.
What is VoiceThread?
Voicethread is a free online resource that can be used to make learning more interesting and motivating for your students. No matter in what levels your students are or what you plan to teach them, you can confidently rely on many different options that VoiceThread could offer you!
In what ways can teachers use VoiceThread?
Teachers can utilize this collaborative tool in numerous ways. Assessing speaking using story-telling technique could be effectively done using VoiceThread. By means of multimedia presentations, this easy-to-adapt web 2.0 tool allows you to create an interactive learning atmosphere outside classrooms For instance, you can easily consider designing a PowerPoint presentation where your students can interact online and share their views on anything related to the topic you are covering. You can flexibly add audio texts, videos, documents (e.g. Word, Excel, PDF) with texts, images, use doodles to highlight parts from your slides as you talk to your students. In fact, VoiceThread offers a host of short videos for beginners for example, on how to create groups or personalize a video presentation!
I created this tutorial video on how to personalize PowerPoint slides using VoiceThread. Have a look and start thinking of designing your own:
Student collaboration and interdependence are the two most pivotal aspects that are reflected in the basic principles of VoiceThread application. It can easily be used with both large and small classes, conferences and even in one-to-one learning settings. Your students can leave their comments in real time and even choose their response mode ( either audio or written). Overall, you realize that you are being successfully committed to give them the scope to actively involve in an online learning environment where they can have authentic exposure to language use.
Advantages of VoiceThread
It is good news for all teachers that VoiceThread is not at all complicated to use. A minimal level of technological expertise is enough to create and design materials via this tool. You don't need any extra software for this tool, it runs on any web browser and operating systems therefore, you are all set to use it only if you can secure a good internet connection!
Another major advantage of VoiceThread is that it gives a teacher the opportunity to register upto 100 students for free without any sort of requirement for individual email address. This feature saves time and energy especially if it is a large group of students.
Teachers can also think of flipping their classroom through VoiceThread.
VoiceThread for ELT practitioners of Bangladesh
VoiceThread clearly offers some great possibilities for Bangladeshi teaching context. To be specific, teachers who struggle to involve relatively passive students in active learning process, VoiceThread can be helpful for them to design an online collaborative platform which is less stressful than face-to-face learning. As a result, this platform can be potentially useful for those students.
In Bangladesh, teachers usually have limited training opportunities to learn how incorporate technology in their teaching. But VoiceThread, with its simple and clear-cut features can help them go online and create stimulating presentations for their students without stressing themselves too much about technological complexities.
On the other side of the coin, time-constraints and institutional pressure often delimit teachers' sincere intention of doing something innovative for their learners. In any such case, using VoiceThread can be slightly difficult because designing or customizing interactive materials demands a good amount of time on teachers' part.
Overall, it is a wonderful teaching and learning tool with fantastic options that any teacher can think of. So without further ado, start exploring VoiceThread from today and see how you can make the best use of it in your teaching context.
Courtesy: Logo of VoiceThread taken from Google images, Screencast-o-matic used to create tutorial video.
https://voicethread.com/media/misc/support/JTECVoiceThread.pdf
Your introduction is so clear and detailed. I can easily know whether I can use it or how to use it for my future classes.The teaching example is very useful!!
ReplyDeleteThank you Iris! Yes, while exploring VoiceThread, I realized how useful it can be for teachers of different contexts!
DeleteThank you for the tutorial, Nusrat! VoiceThread is definitely great for flipped classroom and it does not seem all that difficult to create something using Powerpoint. I was actually thinking of having students use VoiceThread to record themselves (for oral speaking practice) or a presentation on a particular topic (if we are exploring a new theme) and upload them so their friends can comment on them. This could be used as an activity for an E-learning day (which is stipulated by my ministry, so that learning can still take place in the event of an incident which prevents students from attending school).
ReplyDeleteComprehensive tutorial. You seem to be having lots of fun with this tool. Your piece if very hands-on and helpful.
ReplyDelete