Websites to Inspire Creative Language: Installment Three

 

A few years ago, the Occupational Therapist I worked with discovered a free website called Voicethread.  Voicethread is difficult to explain but amazing to experience!  In a nutshell, it is a a collaborative multimedia slideshow that holds images, documents, and videos.   It allows the student to record their voice and encourages a collaborative conversation by allowing others to give their input in the work.  It  allows people to comment on the students work in five ways:  voice by microphone or telephone, text, audio file and video

In addition, it can increase your communication with parents and colleagues as it allows for the student work to be shared! friends, students, and colleagues to add  comments.  Here is the link to get your FREE Educator Account!

I used The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown to get started using this wonderful tool.  The Important Book is a pattern book that allows lots of opportunities to use descriptive language in the project.   We read the book and then used a template to help organize the students thoughts and drew some delightful pictures to support their oral narration!  It was time consuming, but VERY worthwhile!

Even more exciting, Voicethread has  FREE  Voicethread App for the iPad now too!

This allows for all the same features as the website with the mobility and ease we have all come to love in our iPads!  It connects directly to your account on the main website using the same password.

How will you use this in your sessions?  The possibilities are endless.   The website comes complete with  digital library of more than five dozen examples of VoiceThread being used in a wide variety of content areas taught in K-12 classrooms.