Voice Threads

This is such a unique tool. What I like about this is that students can utilize this to improve on their speaking and listening skills. Every semester I do a lesson on listening skills (in my Work Internship class). The lesson is based upon an activity that identifies students that choose to NOT listen under direction. This activity starts the “listening” dialogue and we discuss strategies as to how to listen better. This lesson launches our communication unit. We then go into body language, interpersonal communication skills, conflict/resolution, speaking, and writing skills.

I am excited to learn about this tool because we just began the communication unit this past week. As the culminating activity of the unit, the students are required to host a TV show, interviewing an industry professional (of their chosen career path). They are graded on their interview (listening skills during the interview, body language, speaking skills, and on-camera presentation) and also their written outline with questions.

I would like to use voicethread as the last part of the activity so that the students can critique each other’s interviews while watching them. What a great way for instant feedback from each other, while demonstrating their knowledge of each aspect of communication.

To answer the question, “Would you use it?” YES!!! I’ll set it up for the unit I am teaching right now. And, I don’t mind paying the 10 dollars for 60 minutes of phone commenting! Although, can we get a school subscription?

I recorded my audio comment on the last photo that Alicia posted. All others, I typed. I did try to upload a sound file from my camera, but I needed to upgrade to do so. I think it would be a good investment if the school did purchase a subscription. I can see many teachers utilizing this.

Creative Commons

Being a teacher of media literacy, I continuously stress the importance of copyright usage to my students. No matter what application (class demo, video project, web project, graphic design) the medium is used in, I expect my students to follow all copyright laws when utilizing photos, videos, music, etc.

Currently, I have two practices (I would love to hear about other ideas that I could use):
1. My students contact the artist, publication house, music label, etc. to get permission from the organization/artist to use the media. This provides students an opportunity to learn how to write professional emails, business memos, practice telephone etiquette, polish their research and time-management skills, and to identify the intricacies of copyright usage.
2. If they cannot get permission from the appropriate copyright holder, then they are to either (a) create/design the media themselves or (b) use creative commons to retrieve what they are looking for.

One example:
In the broadcast news class, the student producers and writers have been using creative commons since the beginning of the school year. It is amazing how much free media is available for them to use. They have used it to design over-the-shoulder graphics, video for b-roll (that they can't capture themselves), and music to lay under features.

I think CC is a great tool to use, especially in an educational setting. Alicia asked, "Could this help or hinder their understanding and respect of copyright law?" My answer is simple: Educate our students on copyright law and model YOUR knowledge of it (basically, don't break the law and show them how to access copyrighted information legally). Once you have done that, using CC can definitely help the students to not only understand the law, but also respect it.

Flickr

I made the above photo on one of the third party sites: Big Huge Labs. I used one of the photos from Flickr and chose the "blog header" to create this.

Whoa! This stuff keeps getting better and better! We can bookmark our pictures to delicious and Facebook and view other friend's photos. It was neat to see Jen W. picture of her jumping out of an airplane. Gorgeous photos of the zebra! What a cool experience, Jen!

Also, the library pictures look terrific! Great lighting, Alicia.

The photos are absolutely beautiful quality. I like that you don't have to change the size of the photos before uploading. I sometimes have to do that for snapfish and ALWAYS for Facebook. I also noticed that we can upload our photos from Flickr and send them to snapfish...awesome, considering it takes a long time for snapfish to upload any photos.

I uploaded the "teacher" picture (of me and two other teachers instructing professional educators on the design of a publication website) and my latest trip to New Orleans (we go there for the food)!

My user name is pkady