Group Participation and Community Using VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a web-based platform that enables teachers and students to upload images, video, or documents, record audio, video, or text comments, and then invite others to record comments as well. Its uniqueness lies in the ease in which audio commentary can be added to images and documents and the ability to add multiple commentaries to a single artifact.

VoiceThread Simply Speaking from VoiceThread on Vimeo.

VoiceThread provides a wonderful opportunity for student self expression and creativity. The simple combination of visual and recorded media is perfect for creating multimedia presentations in a relatively short time frame using simple tools. It also prompts students to think carefully about what they are going to say before recording themselves. As many educators have discovered, especially language and art teachers, there are a myriad of educational possibilities with VoiceThread. For example, students can practice foreign language skills by describing a picture. They can analyze and comment upon historically significant photographs or architecture. Photography students could present and explain their work and artists could upload and describe their drawings. A class can create a virtual tour of a place or event they are studying. VoiceThread can even be used as a means to debate a topic. For instance, students could analyze and comment on photographs of the crisis in Darfur and debate the appropriateness of United Nation’s intervention in the area.  – Tom Daccord

Examples of VoiceThreads

VoiceThread can be integrated in classes in a variety of ways:

  • Create a virtual tour of a country or historical place.
  • Comment on historical photographs or editorial cartoons.
  • Create oral book reports.
  • Create a public service announcement on an important local or world issue.
  • Simulate an interview of a historical or fictional character.
  • Comment on a speech, law, document, chart, or graph.
  • Create a presentation based on images of local artifacts or architecture.
  • Practice vocabulary in a foreign language.

The Cigar Box

In this award-winning project students remix primary source images to create digital collages and historical documentaries. VoiceThread played a key role in providing peer feedback (across different classes and schools).

The Silk Road

This VoiceThread provides a scaffolding for research and active engagement with an important topic of world history.

4th Grade – Letters from Internment Camps

Students explore an historical event that is relevant to their physical community, the removal of Japanese-Americans to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Many Voices for Darfur

Students examine political cartoons about the world’s reaction to Genocide in Darfur and comment on them.

Who we Are…

This example compares students from Belize (Punta Gorda) and Rye, New Hampshire, including favorite foods, # of siblings, etc.

For more examples, please visit the following:

Voice Thread Articles from Our Instructors




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