Wednesday, March 17, 2010

BP7_2010317_Web2.0_VoiceThread

The Web 2.0 tool I'll talk about for this post is Voice Thread. Voice Thread is an asynchronous communication tool. One person, the creator, creates a group and posts some type of media - image, document, movie, whatever. Then, anyone invited to the group can post their comments and feedback. What is unique about Voice Thread is that comments can be in text, audio or video. You can even phone in your comment. This feature works great for those who don't want to just leave a text message, but don't have the means to leave an audio or video comment. Voice Thread also allows users to "draw" while commenting. By this I mean if the creator of the group posted an image or video, you can enhance your comment by drawing on the media to get your message across more clearly. The drawing does not stay on the media permanently; rather it exists only during your comment.

Voice Thread can be used for people to comment on an image, video, document, presentation or any collection of those. I said previously that Voice Thread is asynchronous, which it is, but more accurately I should say that you cannot chat live. It isn't really meant for live discussions anyway. Voice Thread is meant more as a tool to create dynamic comments.

Voice Thread can be a beneficial (and fun!) tool for education, specifically for assessment purposes. For example, in a graphic design class, a student completes a rough draft of their assignment and posts the assignment (an image) on Voice Thread. The teacher can then go into Voice Thread, provide video or audio feedback and draw on the assignment to point out what they are talking about. Because this type of feedback has the potential of being both auditory and visual, I think students would have fun and benefit from it. Plus, in the process they might find inspiration for new uses of Voice Thread along the way.

4 comments:

  1. Josh,

    What a great tool. I can see how this could carry on a conversation in many ways and allows for the response to e more individualized. I like how it can also add the element of fun as you stated.

    I will have to check it out!

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  2. Josh,
    I heard about VoiceThread but never really had time to explore. Thank you for your detailed description. It is clear to me now that it would be the best tool for interactive feedback. It is fantastic to know that such tool sexist. It is awesome that any instructor would be able to leave a comment that is not just static, but can highlight the part of the image or presentation we are commenting, and the learner can hear the commentary at the same time. Great details in you post. Thanks for sharing.

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  3. This is a great tool. Especially when you want to get feedback and don't want to sit and read every single post. People tend to shorten their messages with audio versus text so VoiceThread seems like the best of both worlds for those who have limited time and want to hear that others have to say. I like the details in your post. I'll check it out!

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  4. Josh, this is a very high tech tool and I immediately thought of digital project management. It is so hard sometimes to explain something to someone, especially when you are dealing with creative content because it's almost always conceptual. With this, one could augment text or verbal feedback with DRAWING. A picture is worth 1,000 words, right? My bookmark bar is getting REALLY full. :-] Great find, Josh.

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