These High-School seniors used VoiceThread to create the final segment to a school wide literacy project, “A Day in the Life of Dunnellon High School.”
The project required collaboration across content area beginning with the original class where students froze November 19th, 2008 using digital cameras and then it moved to the TV productions class where students made a slide show for the entire student body to view during lunch. Next the graphic-design class made books of “The Day in the Life of Dunnellon High School,” and finally I pulled stragglers to create this VoiceThread.
The VoiceThread finalized a project already in progress. Hence, it became a perfect tool for parents to view from their own homes. The objectives began with the benchmark “Authors Purpose” and later the students initiated the one-classroom project that grew into a school-wide literacy project, “A Day in the Life of Dunnellon High.”
It was easy for students to upload pictures and using the doodle feature – they had no trouble creating the VoiceThread after I introduced them to the tools.
My advice would be to let the kids explore and investigate the many tools VoiceThread offers. I discovered that kids love to create and show digital artifacts. In addition, students begin to check for accuracy while taking great pride in a project that they create for someone other than their teacher. This is a powerful concept because their names are tied to the final VoiceThread product, and it is judged by many!
“A Day in the Live of Dunnellon” began with an idea to model “A Day in the Life of America.” The creators of “America 24/7,” Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen, gave a clear purpose to construct their book. I used their book to identify the Florida literacy benchmark of Author’s Purpose.