New Media

The new media that I chose to try this week was Voicethread. Voicethread is a tool for having conversations around media online. It is similar to a chat forum with audio, but is designed for the purpose of commenting on specific media files. An example would be a teacher sharing a slideshow presentation with his class online. The teacher could highlight, pause, and write notes directly on the screen while talking and Voicethread wil record these actions with audio and archive them for students to access.

Voicethread is set up so that you can post via telephone, webcam, text, file upload, or microphone. You are able to share a link to your media and invite friends to post threads or even embed your media page within their sites. It is also possible to export your media as a movie for use on TV, computer, iPod, iPhone, etc.


Users within Voicethread are represented as icons on the screen. You can upload your own images to create your own identity, which will be displayed on the sidebar. Users can then click on your icon to listen or view your comments. A single user is able to have multiple identities within the same account and create separate posts without having to log out. This is a graet feature for teachers who plan on having multiple students posting from the same computer.

When I first tried Voicethreading, I was skeptical on its effectiveness as a tool in online education. Now that I have taken the time to try all of the features, I am convinced that it will be a huge contributer to the e learning arena. With this technology, teachers can update their presentations live and make them accessible to students at any time. Students can even download the original presenation file in read only format to print. I see Voicethread being especially powerful for use within the K-6 grade range. As Dr. Monaghan mentioned, children at this age always want to share what they've created or learned and if you can leverage this enthusiasm, it can make for a flourishing learning environment.

Overall, I was very impressed with this new media tool. It is great for producing instructional videos or tutorials to be distributed online (without the need of additional software). It is very flexible in that you can upload any file as the focus of discussion, whether it be a picture, text document, video etc. Once created, the Voicethread page can be resized and embedded anywhere on the web. It even has the option to automatically export to various popular social networking sites. This is great for archiving resources within your own personal sites. I know that once Voicethreading is discovered by educators that utilize the web, it will become an integral component of their instruction.

For more information on Voicethread visit: http://voicethread.com