Last month, I helped Ms. Chenette’s Spanish IV classes use VoiceThread. Ms. Chenette has reached out to three different schools in Spain (Madrid, Canary Islands, and Valladolid) for her students to communicate with over the course of the school year. They first started connecting by sending letters to the other schools - starting a pen pal system. All parties involved appreciated receiving and hearing from a student across the globe. However, in phase 2, Ms. Chenette wanted to kick it up a notch. So we brainstormed and decided to have students create a VoiceThread presentation. The advantage of using this tool allowed for visual images, audio recording, and video recording. A win win solution! (click HERE to read a previous blog post on VoiceThread and how it was used in a Science course).
Process:
- Students created a free account with VoiceThread
- Demonstration on what students can do with the tool was provided as well as documentation on using the tool (click HERE to view this documentation)
- Class determined what information should be shared to their pen pal
- Students worked on producing the product
- Students shared link to the VoiceThread through a Google Assignment Submission Form
- Teacher shared links to the cooperating teacher in Spain
Producing the Product:
Students had to...
- Find images that connected to their story (some images were of their own pictures while others were screen shots of their writing)
- Speak their story (and annotate over images if it made sense)
- Turn on the webcam so that their pen pal can see them speak to them
Things to Keep in Mind:
- Since students were creating a VoiceThread that was being shared to the world, they were told not to share detailed information about themselves. For instance, my full name is this, and I live at this address, and my social security number is this, and I love to do this, etc were examples of info that we asked students NOT to share for obvious reasons. This was not so much a big deal seeing as though students already wrote a letter to their pen pal prior to this assignment.
- Some parents/students did not feel comfortable using this tool so they had an alternative approach to completing this assignment
I thought that this project was a great way to connect with their pen pal seeing as though in our society now, people love to see pictures and watch short videos. Ms. Chenette was also able to assess her students not only on their written Spanish, but she could also assess how they spoke. As a bonus, a couple of weeks later, a couple of the schools in Spain shared some videos that they made to send back to BHS. Very cool connection Ms. Chenette and her Spanish IV students are making with the help of technology!
