Voicethread in the Classroom

As a middle school teacher I saw too many teachers using Powerpoint presentations. Not that Powerpoint is bad, but when a middle school student moves from one classroom to the next, asked to sit quietly, not move, and listen to a fifty-five minute lecture just to pack up and do it again in the next room, there's a problem.

Students would make it to my Science classroom and say, 'We aren't going to watch another Powerpoint, are we?' Without trying to undermine other classrooms, I would excitedly reply, 'We get to do Science in this room!'

Voicethread is one tool that breaks away from the Powerpoint mold and helps content come alive. If we're learning about volcanoes we can upload cool images and students can record comments on how they erupt. When teaching about earthquakes, we can upload videos and the teacher can Doodle over certain sections to highlight the devastating effects. Or, during frog dissection week students can upload their own videos and have classmates critique their dissection techniques.

This is a just a sample of the ways Voicethread can be used in the classroom. If you're a Powerpoint person, it's ok, Voicethread can work like it, but give viewers more choices in interacting with the content you present.

We could share many more examples of using Voicethread in the classroom, but instead, we recommend visiting the Voicethread4education wiki to read more. Also, here are 2 resources from the site: