Susan Woodruff is an independent professional developer and active member of the International SIM Network. She recently began experimenting with VoiceThread and ways to apply this collaborative tool to education. Read her experience below.
—
As I was playing around on the Internet and doing some web surfing the other day, I found an interesting application. Actually, it is the one I’ve been looking for (not all that hard) for almost a year. For a SIM professional developer, instructional coach, students, and teachers alike, I think the only limits of it are our own creativity. Let me start back about a year ago when my son came home from his Advanced College Calculus class. He was a sophomore last year in college, and he had always done well in math. Last year, however, the course was much more challenging. In about the second or third week of school, he came home all excited and wanted to show me how his professor was going to work with her students who had questions. He got online and went to a website. There he was able to access a video she had recorded where she worked through a problem mentally and modeled her problem solving process. Stephen said it was incredibly helpful. What he liked was that he could access it multiple times. Anytime he was doing homework and felt “stuck” he had access to his professor’s thinking by going to that website.
Back to the present…as I was goofing off and procrastinating the other day, I found a short article and demonstration of a VoiceThread. It is actually an online free website that can be used for teaching, collaborating, coaching, nearly anything that you can think of. Documents, videos, pictures, and nearly any other type of document can be uploaded to the site. The creator of a voice thread can comment on it while annotating through a webcam, microphone, or text. Once it is uploaded, others can be invited to view it, or it can be put on the website to be viewed by the public. It is quite simple to learn, and it is actually quite fun after you get used to looking at yourself on the videocamera. I did find that I had to switch my Adobe Flash settings on my Mac, so if you have any trouble recording, check those. I would love to collaborate with a few of you who might want to work on a presentation of something. The VoiceThread is so interactive that it almost feels like someone is there. For only $60 per year, you can buy a subscription that allows you to use a lot more features of the site. My mind is generating all kinds of great ways this could be used. Please check out voicethreads.com, and let us know what you think about it and if you have any great ideas for using it. I’ve made a VoiceThread just for you to check out. If you are brave, take a moment and respond with a note in the following VoiceThread. OK?
-Sue
Interested in writing an article for the Stratepedia blog? Just email Aaron or Amber with your ideas at help@stratepedia.org.



So how do you rip a DVD? My best answer is to get to know
Since I accidentally posted this week’s Friday Five on Thursday, I figured I’d give you a few bonus tips. This time, instead of the technical stuff, I want to mention etiquette. Here are some quick tips:






