Tag: Voicethread

Finding their Voice

Google, Literacy, My class, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on8 Comments on Finding their Voice

Over the last few weeks we have been working with the poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We have been discussing and exploring it through lots of talk and drama. On Monday we talked as a class about the drama technique of hot-seating, I asked the children to work with a partner to prepare some questions they might ask the Highwayman if they had the chance. As they were working I wandered out of the class and immediately returned into the room, but this time I tiptoed in and asked one of the children, in a whispery voice, whether it was safe or not. They looked bemused and I crept through the rest of the class shiftily looking from side to side. I had become the Highwayman. 

I have always enjoyed drama as a way into text and the children love it when their teacher goes out on a limb a little and pretends. I told the children that I didn’t have much time and that I had gotten their message about meeting them here. We had a series of questions about the plot, the character’s feelings about Bess and what it was like to be a criminal. All the time I was checking through the blinds and looking suspiciously at the kids. When my time was up I acted as if the paranoia had got to me and I accused the children of setting me up – that it was a trap and I with one more furtive glance I dashed off out the door again. When I returned we were all smiling. (The children went on to do hot-seating in smaller groups.)

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In the following lesson we used a Voicethread to further explore the characters in the poem. (Each child had their own laptop in this session.) I asked the children to add voice and text (I always give them the choice) comments on the various character images I had uploaded. I prompted them to make these kinds of comments:

  • Questions that they might like to ask the characters. Consolidating the previous drama work.
  • Answer a question that they see from someone else. Take on the character’s role and answer a question posed by other people in the class.
  • General reactions and thoughts on the different characters in the poem.
I have enjoyed using Voicethread in the classroom for a long time now and have always considered it to be a great tool to encourage quality speaking and listening. This was only the second session using the tool and I once again witnessed children recording, listening back and improving what they had done. The open and transparent nature of sharing their work seems to sharpen their attention to detail especially in voice recordings. I sat with a few boys who need considerable support with their literacy and they were just having a great time, big grins, listening and enjoying the comments from others in the class and recording their own. Finding their voice. When you work like this as a class there is a tangible sense of a community of use.
 
We were coming to the end of the session and with 10 minutes to go I wanted to review the lesson with the children but I decided to change the plan a little and explore a new method to do this. I asked them to log into their newly created Google Mail accounts and send me a short message explaining what they thought of that lesson. With my inbox displayed on the SMARTBoard the reviews of the lesson rolled in. Although the comments were simple in nature it proved a point, it tested the process more than anything. These 9 year olds were independently able to switch applications, sign into their accounts, think about their learning and respond by composing and sending an email in under 10 minutes and for some much less than that. The children each had an opportunity to express their feelings about the lesson, to add their voice to the lesson review. If I had just asked them as a whole class then I would have only been able to garner a handful of comments. Would these comments have been from the same groups of children? Probably – so the use email in this instance helped everyone to express their own indiviual remarks.
 
I am not sure that email is the ideal tool to respond with lesson comments, although replying to an email that you have sent to the children with key questions about the lesson would be more appropriate I think. Using Google Chat is another tool that would allow for instant messaging in review of a lesson, or I could have added a final image on the Voicethread for the children to add lesson review comments. (Another alternative is to take advantage of a Google Form for lesson review)
 
Whichever way you approach it I think that it gives every child the opportunity to make their voice heard.

Classroom Cornerstones

My class, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on7 Comments on Classroom Cornerstones

Tomorrow sees us begin our Autumn term here in Nottinghamshire, England – most of the English primary schools will be back by next week at least. I just wanted to explain the road ahead for me in terms of the ways I will be using technology in the classroom this year, my classroom cornerstones. These tools/ideas will be sticking around for the course of the year, either because they have become part of the fabric of how we support learning in the case of the first two, or they are areas I want to explore the potential in more depth, the latter two.

Group media collaboration tool: Voicethread – this has become such a great tool to use in supporting children with speaking and listening. Beyond the basic group collaboration, last year I saw children grow in confidence due to the protracted use of refined talk and voice recording in Voicethread. Children who would usually not utter a thing when in a whole class situation were more willing to contribute and speak in front of the class. There is a lot going on when a child decides to record a comment in a Voicethread, most importantly for me is the fact that they willingly and independently vet and refine what they say. We will be looking to consolidate the use of Voicethread in the classroom this year, especially in the use of peer feedback in the writing process.

Office 2.0: Google Apps/Docs – I carefully documented the steps we took last term to use Docs in the classroom and I have even had the opportunity to contribute to the Official Google Docs blog in a post about introducing online collaboration. We will continue to use Docs as a cornerstone technology in our classrooms this coming year. The classes we were with last year have moved onto Year 6 and I look forward to seeing their work with the tool continue and the teachers alongside them develop their knowledge and understanding of the technology. Last year we did not have the opportunity in the Autumn and Spring term to use Docs so we will have a whole bunch of new opportunities to utilise the tool to support learning in the best way. I am looking to use Google Forms more and to reach beyond the school in bigger international collaborative projects – please let me know if you have a similar age class using Docs.

Timeline tool: Mnemograph – Last year I stumbled upon this great timeline tool just as we were finishing our Ancient Egyptian unit. We will repeat this unit, beginning before Christmas and I am pleased to be working with Will and Michael from Mnemograph in some development of new features which will perhaps make it easier for a whole class to work with the tool. If you have not had an opportunity to see it in action I would strongly suggest you take a look – it is very useful for Ancient history as it is one of the few online timeline tools that allows you to go back that far. I am looking forward to unleashing my class on Mnemograph and putting it through it’s paces this year.

Class blog: ???? – I have yet to decide about the tool that we will use this year for our class blog. I know that it doesn’t matter a great deal and it is more about the content. 2 years ago we ran a class blog for the Year 6 class I was with and found we had problems remembering usernames and passwords and the whole process took too long. I have been exploring the use of Posterous – a blogging tool that just needs an email sending to a simple address and that is it. It deals really well with all of the media a classroom could possibly throw at it. Of course a Blogger account has a similar email address to send updates too – still undecided about the best way to go yet.

I think there is enough there to keep me out of trouble for the year to come (there is of course about 10 other things I didn’t mention) – what are you focusing on this year in your classroom? What will be new for you? What are you going to consolidate and explore in greater depth?