Dress to the 9's with Voicethread

Alright, another week closer to the end of semester and Christmas holidays! I don't know about anyone else, but I am so stoked to trade the time with my projects for enjoy time with my family in a couple of weeks.

This past week I was able to play around with a new app called Voicethread. This application is an internet conversation tool that can be used for classroom conversations, collaborations, and various other classroom assignments. I tried to put together a short clip where I would post a physics demonstration and try to have students figure out "What is Going On?" A video like this would be posted about once every week to once every two weeks. Students would have to respond to the video with an audio, written, or video comment to answer the question, "What is Going On?" Most, if not all of the demos that are featured in the videos would have been shown in class as well. A seemingly decent activity with accountability in its assessment.

Being a beginner to this application I found it rather finicky and seemingly full of limitations. All audio comments have to be uploaded or taken in one prolonged take. It was nice to be able to doodle on the video, however, I still had difficulty performing a perfect take (which I never did quite do) without the ability to pause mid take or to use bits and pieces of different takes. I can see how this would be a useful application, however, I feel as though the lack of editing capabilities, low user-friendliness, and the inability to  save the video file to your computer makes this application something that I will not continue to use. I do see that it has value, however, I am unsure if the time that it will take to learn how to use it (and teach students how to use the program) will really be worth the ability to use this program.

Here is the link to the video that I made with the attempted explanation of what was going on: https://voicethread.com/share/3832488/

Something that I did learn through reflecting is that I find it difficult to properly explain things in one medium. This is something that I certainly need to work on if I plan to be effective as an educator.

Lesson for the Week: It is essential for development to confront our weaknesses. For me, this means to practice explaining situations clearly and in as few words as possible.