Voice+Thread

Here's my first VoiceThread creation: practicing medical vocabulary media type="custom" key="20047654"

My Spanish IV students study medical/hospital vocabulary one month. I've created a VoiceThread from scanned pictures that some of my students drew. In my current VoiceThread, I've used text, voice, and video recordings to ask questions and to prompt dialogues about the pictures. I also included an image detailing anatomy in Spanish, and a document with recommended links for further study.

__** Using VoiceThread in the classroom: **__
 * My students can participate in a variety of activities using VoiceThread, such as in the sample embedded above. They can type in answers to the questions that I've posted, such as corrections for the two sentences, or suggestions for what happened to one of the people in the emergency room. They can also respond using voice or video, participating in a dialogue or explaining a scenario.
 * I can also use VoiceThread to present cultural information, as in many of the sample VoiceThreads that I viewed with famous works of art. I can present the work, focus on a particular aspect, ask questions for followup or to check for understanding, and allow students to comment or reflect.
 * Often in class my Spanish IV and V students create alternate endings to stories we read, draw comic strip versions of the stories, or write a parallel story in the author's style. These the students and I can upload to VoiceThread and share, adding comments and questions, or creating dialogue for the characters, etc.
 * With the Promethean board in my classroom, we can complete many of these activities as samples during class time, and then the students can use their time out-of-school to pursue it more. Later in class we can look at what all have added.
 * My students can support the elementary Spanish programs (a volunteer program through Allegheny College) by creating VoiceThreads on lessons, or on fairy tales, etc. The elementary students will love to view them, and to participate in them.
 * One VoiceThread that I watched and loved was of an elementary classroom. They had read the book, "Oso Pardo" ("Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?). After reading the book, all the students drew their own animals in their favorite colors, then took turns narrating the next animal that the brown bear saw. I can't wait to try something like this with my students!