PART 2- PHOTOS

Take photos of the student’s work – no faces but you can be creative if you want to include the students holding or pointing to their work somehow. Photos will work better if you don’t use the highest resolution on your camera because the photos have to be uploaded to the internet and smaller size photos will load more quickly.

Alternately you could have the students draw about the work they are doing in Tux Paint.

PART 3- VOICETHREAD

3.1 Photos or Pictures

Go to the VoiceThread site, click on “Create”and Login with the details you used when you signed up. Upload your photo or photos from your computer. You can have a page for each student, or a page for a group of students, or a single page.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and you need some help, you could use these directions How to sign up for Voicethread as an educator.

3.2 Identities

Make an Identity for each student in your class. Once these are made they are in your account for any new VoiceThreads that you make- you only have to do this once!

Type the student’s first name only and then browse to find their picture that they have made in Tux. (At our school it will be in “L drive” in the students folder in “saved”.) You will be able to see the image if you view the thumbnails. VoiceThread automatically allocates an icon for each name so the Tux pictures can be added later if you prefer by using the edit button.

Once the identities have been made you are ready to start recording the student comments.

3.3 Audio Comments

Comments can be added in a number of ways.

Method 1: In my experience it is easier to have the students record their comments with their buddy helper using another program and then to upload the comments into VoiceThread as they are finished. If you are using this Method then I would use AudioTouch (which is in the programs folder) to record the audio. The students can record more than one file as VoiceThread allows more than one file on each identity or you can “join” all the audio files in AudioTouch to make it quicker to upload.

Method 2: You can have the students come to the teacher’s computer with VoiceThread and record directly onto their identity one by one. Similar to a class Photostory.

Make sure you choose the right identity for each recording. It is easy to forget to change and it can not be moved to another identity- it has to be deleted and redone.

There are VoiceThread tutorials on your VoiceThread account which are well worth a look. If uploading photos and sound takes a long time then the settings on your computer may need adjusting.

Once you have finished your VoiceThread you can embed it onto your class blog. If you update the VoiceThread then it automatically updates on your blog as well.