Voicethread Experts
My class has the great fortune of working with Ms. Bellone’s grade 4 class. We are learning buddies and get together to explore different activities throughout the year. Her class has used Voicethread before and were perfect coaches for my grade 1 students.
Using buddies is a great idea when you want more one-on-one support. This is ideal when you are exploring new technologies and applications. Knowing that Ms. Bellone’s class had used Voicethread, I asked if they could coach my students through the steps of using the website. In order to prepare our Grade 4 buddies for their session with their grade 1 buddies, I quickly went over the steps with them. I asked that they guide my students through adding both a text comment and a voice comment. Once we were ready, we split up both classrooms to limit the amount of noise and to provide extra space for their partner work.
It was amazing to see how quickly my grade 1 students caught on. It was really exciting to see more and more comments being added to our Voicethread. It was like popcorn popping as their little identities graced the pages of our Voicethread as recordings were posted. My students quickly took ownership of their learning and posted comments with little or no support. The grade 4 buddies had a lot of fun working with our class and we had a lot of fun too. Our new student, Woosung, who had just arrived from Korea, exclaimed: “I love ISB!”
After the session was done, I asked my students to share what they had done with their parents.
I created a How-To sheet with screenshots for each step. This was sent in an email, inviting my parents to see what we had done in class. Many students went home to add more comments to our Voicethread. Some parents wrote to me to express how excited their child was and how some of them shared the Voicethread with relatives overseas. And there we had it…a hugely successful learning opportunity. 
I am looking forward to the next Voicethread session, where students will be given the opportunity to post comments and questions independently.
