Personal Digital History
My Journey as an Educator
Reflection
VoiceThread is a neat tool that allows users to start (multi)media-centric “conversations in the cloud.” Users create a collaborative slideshow of images, videos, and other documents that others can navigate and comment on. Viewers participate in the conversation by commenting with their voice, text, or video, all without software and in real-time. In this personal digital history assignment (embedded above and viewable here), I used photos and my voice to tell the story of how I became an educator, and what I’ve learned about teaching through various experiences around the world. I have started the conversation by recording a voice comment on each slide, but this is just the beginning, as viewers from across the world can view my VoiceThread to learn about my story and add their own questions, comments, and connections.
Teachers could use VoiceThread in the K-12 classroom in a number of ways:
- Students create their own personal digital histories, to tell the story of how they were named, where their ancestors came from, their growth in a year, or even entire autobiographies.
- Students recreate the digital history of a historical figure. For example, the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum’s website gives a short biography of 37 different individuals that portray the experiences of a wide range of people during the Holocaust. Each student could create a VoiceThread to represent one of these individuals, to tell part of a collective story.
- Students summarize a book, story, or current event in chronological order, using drawings, photos, or symbols.
- Students tell a story from the perspective of someone else. This could be the protagonist of a story, or perhaps the same story from the perspective of the antagonist or another figure. For a unit on the Civil War, students may make separate VoiceThreads to represent the Union and Confederacy, or perhaps more interestingly, they could both comment on the same VoiceThread to give a more comprehensive telling of history.
- Students quickly react to a photo or video. Teachers often use videos and images as a hook or way to draw students into a particular lesson. If the teacher posts the photo(s) or video(s), students can simultaneously comment with text, audio, or video as a launching point to the learning activity.
- Students provide feedback on a piece of writing, art, or other work. This becomes a digital gallery walk, where students can move about at their own pace to both give and receive feedback. It could be focused to highlight effective techniques, revise weak elements, or both.
Learn more:
- Visit VoiceThread to start your own conversation or join an existing one.
- View more ideas for incorporating VoiceThread in your classroom in this wiki.