Thing 13

Using VoiceThread was very easy and I like how it can replace boring dialogue presentations in class. I want to give my students lots of speaking opportunities, but omg, they just don't do a good job in front of an audience! Last year I had two students who absolutely would not present in front of the class. We had to go to the hallway for every single presentation. Others enjoyed presenting, but their peers often would still be working and ignoring the conversations. I tried lots of different things like having them grade the presenters, listen for errors for extra credit, etc. and nothing really worked. The majority refused to participate as an audience. They would usually spend a lot of time practicing, so I knew they were getting good experience, but they didn't want to share with others. I think this would be a great way to avoid the presentation anxiety by having them use a slideshow I pre-made or they could do their own with comments.

I could absolutely use this for testing options by having students doing storytelling, making presentations, comic dialogues, and other speaking opportunities. This is much much easier than using a hand-held recorder and rewinding (often over someone else's dialogue!)