Before the March Break, I had my students complete their project on World War 2. In partners, students were assigned an important event from the war. They had to examine the event, answer critical thinking questions, and then present their findings. As an added element this year, I also assigned a short video, more as a quick dry run for their major assignment, and to test run Voicethread.

Unfortunately, Voicethread did not work as hoped. Partially my own fault – again I was absent (a reoccurring theme in my teaching life this winter!) so there was not a lot of instruction on how to use Voicethread. Consequently, most of the students chose to use software they already had on their computers. The few students who did use Voicethread, didn’t log in through the class account I had created, and both groups complained of many issues using the program. They found it slow and glitchy. When I was marking their work, I didn’t really like the quality of the Voicethread videos compared to what students created using Photostory. The Voicethreads didn’t seem to flow very well.

So, I’ve decided to ditch Voicethread and allow the students to use the program of their choice for their major assignment digital essay. Glad I decided to test out Voicethread before!

My students have just gotten started on their digital essays. Last week was research in the library, this week is working on the thesis…