Library of Uses › English/Lang Arts

7th Grade from Amy Cobb

Description

This VoiceThread is a great example of a culmination of a unit that was taught entirely online. In place of a written assessment the students were asked to take all the information they gathered from their study on Edgar Allan Poe and put it all into the "What do you know about Poe?" VoiceThread.

Benefits to students

• Students record their thoughts and ideas in a format that can be viewed again and shared with friends and parents.
• Students practice expressing ideas orally in a more intimate setting than during class time, either in a small-group or one-on-one with the teacher, which may increase participation and engagement in class topics.
• Students learn to research on-line and organize information gathered into useful messages.
• Students gain a deeper understanding of concepts when they express them out loud and hear them played back in their own voice

Process/Assignment

My goal was to create a VoiceThread that could be shared with other classes as they study Edgar Allan Poe. This was the first time I was using an interactive website on Poe to teach this unit. I wanted to see how much information was retained at the end of the unit, and so I thought since this whole unit was taught on-line, so should the assessment be an on-line one.

The students were asked to take notes and annotations throughout the course of the unit and hold onto them as they would be asked at the end as an assessment to put what they learned into a VoiceThread. It was a simple discussion with the students, and an easy assignment as they love and are familiar with using this tool.

Challenges or setbacks

It was all easy, as the kids did most of the work. I uploaded the photos to the VoiceThread, and once it was all set up, I let the kids loose.

Tips

It is an easy and fun way for the kids to show what they know. They learned quite a bit from the Poe website and couldn't wait to share.

Tools

Poe website: http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/default_flash.asp

The VoiceThread