VoiceThread. The next big thing in collaborative education

VoiceThread lets users create online multimedia-rich presentations that other users can view, comment on, and even edit. I'll let the VoiceThread site itself give a more specific description of its features below...

"A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world."
--VoiceThread website, About Voicethread

At the bottom of this post is the example that I created on VoiceThread. It is the most powerful piece of multimedia that you will ever see in your life, so brace yourself.

Actually, it's just pictures, commentary, and text of our dog, Zane. But imagine if you used this in your classroom...Imagine what you could do with your content, front-loading background knowledge, questions and inference...

Since I don't have anyone to comment within the voicethread, it doesn't show the full spectrum of its instructional potential. Maybe you would like to comment within the voicethread itself. Feel free to do so if you desire.

To comment on the voicethread, you need to establish an account, which is free and easy. In fact, as a K-12 educator, you get a free version of their PRO Account which gives you unlimited everything (this is a good thing). All you have to do after you have established an account is to click on the GO PRO! account tab in the upper right corner of the page.

Anyhow, there are several tutorials available at the site to check out. There is even a Classroom category (top, middle of the home page) that addresses the educational uses that VoiceThread utilizes. They're definitely worth a look. I learned a lot from them.

So, here it is...