Ideas and Strategies for Using Voice Thread in Science and Math

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Are you searching for a way to share documents, presentations, slideshows, or a series of photos or images with your students?

Then Voice Thread is the free Web 2.0 tool for you and your students (teachers can register for a free education account).

Voice Thread allows you and your students to add audio, video, and text as part of conversations concerning science or math content.

Comments can be added using a pre-recorded audio file, microphone, call from a phone, or webcam and microphone.

A Voice Thread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. This is great when your class is collaborating on a project with students in another time zone or other locations around the world.

Strategies for Both Science and Math

The following are examples which work well in either math or science

1. Students create a presentation about a concept and then embed their presentation in a Glogster poster.

2. Students use Voice Threads created by both teacher and other students which are embedded in a class Wiki or Blog for use to review concepts or examples:

• prior to a test or exam.
• work missed after being absent.

3. Students create a recording of a debate using one slide for pro and another for a con position.

4. Students watch a video related to a concept and add their comments, ideas, or suggestions related to the video.

5. Students use Voice Thread to create digital stories to explain ideas.

6. Students integrate documents created – presentations, word documents, spreadsheets, polls – in Google Docs within their Voice Thread presentations.

7. Back to School Night – take photos of your classroom and students working, then post on your Wiki or Blog for parents who are unable to attend.

Math Teaching Strategies

Students show multiple strategies for solving a problem. This strategy promotes student ownership, while using the language of mathematics.

For example – using a digital image of data within a table, several or all students record a different strategies or make comments about how they solved the problem using data analysis.

Have students explain a new math concept using images to support their explanation.

For example – students create a collection of geometric digital images. Then compare and contrast the images by adding their comments.

Additional math ideas:

1. How to write and solve linear equations.

2. Provide examples and explanations of various forms of display for data sets, including a stem-and-leaf plot or box-and-whisker plot; use the forms to display a single set of data or to compare with sets of data.

3. Provides examples and explanations for percents as a part of a hundred; find decimal and percent equivalents for common fractions and explain why they represent the same value; compute a given percent of a whole number.

Science Teaching Strategies

Students are studying arthropods which have an exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax, and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae. They create a digital Voice Thread of examples of these insects with explanations.

For example – Digital Insect Collection

Students create a Voice Thread presentation to communicate their findings in a science project. This strategy ensures each student within a group participates, because every student must contribute to part of the presentation using their own voice for facts and comments.

For example – Road Kill Project

Additional science ideas:

1. Provide examples of reflection and refraction along with explanations.

2. Provide examples of each type of biome found around the world.

3. Debate the issue of global warming using facts and data presented in a Voice Thread.

Using Voice Thread creates an interactive classroom which can be used in almost any science and math grade level. Teachers can use this Web 2.0 tool for digital storytelling of concepts by students, causing critical thinking, student project presentations, and even a tool for assessment.