Using Voicethread for Digital Conversations

Beginning with email and instant messages and stretching to texting and synchronous video web conferencing, digital dialogue has gradually become a common element of everyday life for today's students—another opportunity to “gather.” The kinds of personal relationships shaped on the playground in an earlier era are now developed in MySpace and Facebook.  While the format may be different, the purpose remains the same:  Our students are crafting identities.

Unrelenting Desire to Interact

This innate and unrelenting desire to interact was probably best defined Danah Boyd—a PhD student at the University of California-Berkeley studying the networks developing between digital youth—in a 2008 blog post when she wrote:  

School is one of the few times when they can get together with their friends and they use every unscheduled moment to socialize - passing time, when the teacher's back is turned, lunch, bathroom breaks, etc. They are desperately craving an opportunity to connect with their friends; not surprisingly, their use of anything that enables socialization while at school is deeply desired.

Boyd goes on to explain the positive role that social networking services can play in the natural growth of a child’s individuality:

Their value is about the kinds of informal social learning that is required for maturation - understanding your community, learning the communicate with others, working through status games, building and maintaining friendships, working through personal values, etc. All too often we underestimate these processes because, traditionally, they have happened so naturally.

Yet, what's odd about today's youth culture is that we've systematically taken away the opportunities for socialization. And yet we wonder why our kids are so immature compared to kids from other cultures. Social network sites are popular because youth are trying to take back the right to be social, even if it has to happen in interstitial ways. We need to recognize that not all learning is about book learning - brains mature through experience, including social experiences.  (Boyd)

Sounds a lot like your own students, doesn’t it! 

They’re working diligently to “take back the right to be social,” aren’t they?  They've sent thousands of instant messages and texts.  They have personal web pages and blogs.  They play online versions of video games with "partners" thousands of miles away.  They spend hours behind a computer screen, plugged into an iPod or talking to someone on their cell phones. 

This drive to connect provides a unique opportunity for school teachers:  Incredibly high levels of student motivation paired with a predefined fluency with electronic communication tools.  Interacting on the Internet has become second-nature to tweens and teens.  It is a language that they have shown a willingness to embrace and an ability to master.  Matching this motivation and fluency with required elements of the curriculum would likely be an exciting—and successful—first step into digital waters.

One tool that can help educators to do just that is Voicethread.

What is Voicethread?

One of the best free tools available to teachers and students who are learning with the world rather than about the world is Voicethread.  Known as a “group audio blog,” Voicethread allows users to record text and audio comments about uploaded images.  Voicethread has two distinct advantages for classrooms that are communicating and collaborating across counties, countries or continents:

1. Voicethread is Asynchronous:  That means users can work on and enjoy Voicethread presentations at any time--even if their "partners" are sleeping a million miles away!
2. Voicethread is Engaging:  Let's face it--sometimes working with digital partners can be pretty boring.  After all, email and discussion boards are nothing more than written text.  Voicethread gives users something interesting to talk about---pictures!  What's more, being able to actually hear one another makes digital communication through Voicethread much more personal. 

Curious about what a Voicethread presentation can look like when created by kids?  Then check out this presentation about Denmark being developed by a group of students somewhere in Cyberspace that has been viewed nearly 2,000 times and that includes over 130 comments:

Planning a Voicethread

Once you’ve created an account and a collection of identities for students to use while commenting on a Voicethread, it’s time to create your first presentation.  Begin by carefully selecting a topic that will promote conversation and debate between students—and that can be conveyed through images currently available to you.

Possible topics include:

• What can you learn about the values of a country or a culture by studying images?

   

• Is Global Warming having an impact on our world?

   

• Has urbanization helped or harmed our community?

   

• Where can evidence of math be found in our daily lives?

   

• Is graffiti a form of artistic expression or simply vandalism?

   

• Who are heroes?

   

After collecting a series of images that represent your topic, carefully script out short opening comments for each image that include a question for viewers to consider.  Scripting comments prior to recording will allow you to organize your thinking—and your images—in a logical order.  This early organization will save time as you produce your final product. 

Initial comments should be somewhere between 1 and 3 sentences long.  Longer comments will discourage viewers from adding their own thoughts—and tend to bore viewers quickly!  Remember that your goal is to promote conversation, not to lecture through pictures.  If you find yourself recording longer initial comments, you probably have images that aren’t very interesting.

Consider this sample comment, taken from the Denmark Voicethread referenced in the opening of this training guide:

“What do you notice in this picture taken outside the train station in Copenhagen—the capital of Denmark?”