How to use VoiceThread for Improving Speaking and Listening in the Classroom
With English teachers' focus on reading and writing, speaking and listening activities in the classroom can fall by the wayside a little too easily. The good news is that this ed tech tool can allow you to effectively create speaking and listening lessons--without even cutting into your time directly in the classroom. For this reason, VoiceThread is naturally a great piece of technology for teaching online, but it also serves the in-person classroom as well!
VoiceThread is a great digital tool to engage students in speaking and listening skills, without the pressure of speaking in front of their peers. Giving students the chance to practice with this tool will help to increase their confidence prior to a higher-stakes speaking assessment, such as delivering a speech or presenting a project in front of the whole class.
A VoiceThread is a way for students to engage in speaking skills through the virtual world. This tool allows students to record their response to a question that you've posed or participate in a class discussion, but delete that recording if they don't like it, and record it again before any of their peers have the chance to listen to it.
A VoiceThread appears as a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation. The benefit of this technology is that the teacher can add voice comments directly onto each slide in order to provide students with further directions, and the students can then comment on each slide using a video recording, a voice comment, or a text comment.
After students record their comments, each slide will provide a scrolling list of all students' responses, simulating a class discussion. Note: If students have mic issues through their computer, there is a "call in number" for students to still be able to access the audio component.
In this way, a VoiceThread can be a powerful tool to engage students in speaking skills. Despite this tool's natural fit in a virtual classroom, it is an asset even when teaching in person. Giving a VoiceThread assignment every week or month can provide students with consistent speaking practice. It also gives you as the teacher the opportunity to provide specific feedback to students about what they are saying or their mode of delivery. In class, we don't always have that option because of how quickly things move when we're facilitating discussions.
My district uses Canvas as our student learning platform, and this tool can be embedded directly into a Canvas page. On one of my Canvas pages, I provided students with directions for engaging in the class VoiceThread. I asked them to provide two voice comments (with or without camera) to the VoiceThread, which I embedded into the Canvas page directly. The perk is that after students create an account on VoiceThread.com, they can do all of their work on our usual Canvas page instead of going to an external site.
How to create a VoiceThread
Go to www.VoiceThread.com
Enter your email address and create an account.
On your dashboard, click "Create."
You should have already created a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation that you wish to upload. Note: I've found that PowerPoint works better, so you may want to save a Google Slides presentation as a PowerPoint for the purpose of uploading the file.
Upload your presentation, title it, and hit save.
VoiceThread will take a minute to upload each slide in your presentation.
Click on the "Comment" button.
Hover at the bottom middle of the screen. Click on the + button to choose how you wish to add your directions/make a comment. You can click on the camera, mic, phone in (VoiceThread will call your cell phone for you to add a voice comment), or type in a text comment. Be sure to save periodically.
Once you've entered all of your directions/comments, click the X on the top right.
You will now see an option for "Share."
Click on "Share" and then choose "Embed" on the left.
Click "Copy Embed Code," which you can then paste into your Canvas page.
Your next step is to go to Canvas and create your assignment page. After writing your directions, use the Cidi Labs menu bar to "Add Advanced Elements" and "Embed Content." Your VoiceThread will embed. The benefit of doing this is students can interact with your VoiceThread all from your normal Canvas page.
If you need to learn how to create a Canvas page or use the Cidi Labs Canvas tool, check out my post here that shows you how to do it, step-by-step.
What do students need to do?
In order to participate on your VoiceThread, students will need to create a VoiceThread account.
Students should go to www.VoiceThread.com and click "Register."
Since they will need to verify an email link from VoiceThread, they need to use an email address that they can easily log into.
Note: If some students receive an error message saying they cannot create an account, I've found that when they click "Sign in" on VoiceThread.com, the log in worked anyway, and they could ignore the error message.
Once students have set up an account, they never have to come to VoiceThread.com again. They just need to make sure they stay logged into it on their browser.
Now, students can come directly to your Canvas page. They are all responding to the class embedded VoiceThread right there on this page. This will allow all students to access the VoiceThread and create a digital class discussion!
This is a fantastic tool for digital class discussions, formal Socratic Seminars, or an informal way to have students share reactions to the text they're reading in class. For students to practice the listening element of "speaking and listening," have students respond to other classmates' posts and build on each other's ideas.
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