This is part 2 of my digital storytelling with voicethread lesson plan. In part 1, I introduced the lesson and explained how to sign up for accounts using the “Gmail Trick”. By the way, I have 25 student accounts on many different Web 2.0 sites and I keep all the login information in an excel file. I learned this the hard way when I kept having to recreate accounts because I forgot the login information.

Now that the house keeping is taken care of I am ready for the lesson. Here’s a quick overview.

• The students work in groups of four to five. Each group has a different focus. In this case, it happens to be cities of Texas.
• Each student creates a slide or two so there will be a total of four to ten slides per group. It’s easier to say only one slide per kid but when they beg to make more it’s hard to say no. You can use anything you want to layout the slides just as long as the final product can be saved as an image.
• Each student writes a script that they will use to narrate. You can have each student narrate on every slide (even the ones their partners made) or just the one they created.
• One student from each group logs in to Voicethead, creates a new story, and loads all the images.
• The students record their comments (the narrations they wrote) for each slide.
• For an added bonus, send the links to your voicethreads to your friends in other schools and have them comment.
  
  Let’s take a look at creating the slides. Sure, you can just use one big picture if that suits your needs. When I create voicethreads for family events, like birthday parties, I just load the pictures and get on with it. For school projects, I really like the kids to put more thought into it. With the 4th grade class I am working with, we are using PowerPoint. I know, I know…there are Web 2.0 sites where we could do the same thing. I have used Picnik for this sort of thing. In this case, PowerPoint works great and they are already familiar with it. I have the kids find and save three to five images and then insert them into one blank slide. This is a good opportunity to teach how to re-size, move and rotate images on a PowerPoint slide. The students add some text as well. In our case, it’s just a big WordArt with the name of the city.
  
  
  When the PowerPoint slides are done, “save as” and change the file format to “JPEG”. You will be prompted to save every slide as a jpeg or just the current slide (choose what is right for your situation).
  
  The next step is having the students write a short script which they will read when narrating their slides. In this project, the students write two or three sentences about every slide in their group, even the ones they did not make themselves.
  
  Now for the part kids really love. In the 4th grade class I am working with, I have already created accounts for each student on Voicethread. One student from each group will login and then click “create”. The next step is uploading the images we created in PowerPoint. Click “Upload” and then “My Computer”. This is a straightforward uploading process and you can load all of the images at once.
  
  Once the images are loaded, you’re ready for student to record their comments. It’s easy for the first student to comment, they just need to click “comment”. I use headset mics for better quality but you can certainly use the built-in mic if needed.
  
  The most complicated step is getting the other students in the group to make their comments. Here’s how to do it. Once the first student creates the voicethread and records a comment, click “share” and then “Get a Link”. Allow everyone to view and comment…you can change this later. Then, click “copy the link”. It will put it on the clipboard. Paste the link somewhere students can access it (i.e. Word document in a shared folder). There are many ways to share a link so do whatever works for you. Then, each student follows the link, logs in, and comments. In our project, the students have already written their scripts so we are prepared when we get to this step. For more information about sharing, watch this: http://voicethread.com/share/325897/
  
  Since I am using the class subscription option, I can easily share with the whole class. When I click “Share”, I can choose my 4th grade class and invite all the students with a couple of clicks.
  
  Our last step is to share the links with other schools and hope they comment as well.
  
  Here are some examples that are from different ages and have different styles:
  http://voicethread.com/share/435453/
  
  http://voicethread.com/share/424448/
  
  http://voicethread.com/share/457702/
  
  http://voicethread.com/share/447678/
  
  http://voicethread.com/share/74963/
  Was this post:

  Innovative(0)

  Valuable(0)

  Tech savvy(0)