VoiceThread

Multimedia Tools

INTRODUCTION

Multimedia is best described in Keith McPherson’s article as “mashing literacy”. In Animoto, images and music are combined in a “video-montage presentation”, while Voicethread involves a combination of images with recorded comments in the form of text or audio files. It is more collaborative. In this post, I'll look at these two multimedia tools to determine their value to me personally and as an educator.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PROCESS OF LEARNING ABOUT THE TOOLS

ANIMOTO

Animoto is an application that combines images and music in a video-montage presentation. It is free for 30 second videos or $3 for any video that is over 30 seconds. You can also buy a yearly subscription for $30 with unlimited videos. Teachers can get a free “all access” pass for 1 year, but they must share their creative ideas with the company.

I found Animoto very easy to use. I uploaded some photos of my trip to Vancouver, added some music from their library and then waited about 10 minutes for my music video to be rendered. You can see my video at the end of this post. It is supposed to take 3-6 minutes to render a video, but seemed longer because of a slow wireless Internet connection, I suppose. I was quite impressed with the results! I have what looks to be a professionally produced music video that I can download, upload to my blog or send to friends in an email.

The website says that for a 30 second video, you can upload 8-15 elements, including text, images, and video depending on the length of the song. In Shonda Brisco’s article on Animoto, she says you can move images around with “slice sorter” and images of special interest can be “spotlighted”. I tried doing that, but it seems I need to pay for those extra features.

VOICETHREAD

The presentation, "What is a VoiceThread?" on the website is a great introduction to this application. I learned that Voicethread is a tool used for making collaborative, multi-media slide shows that hold images, documents and videos. For example, a picture can be uploaded and people can comment on it in five ways: phone, webcam, microphone, text or audio file. Photos can be imported from Flickr, Facebook or the web. Documents can also be used in the following formats: PDF, MSWord, Excel and Power Point.

Educational applications of Voicethread can be found at ed.voicethread.com. Students can create and collaborate on digital stories, practice and document language skills, explore geography and culture, or even solve math problems.

Ed. Voicethread is a safe environment for students. They can’t view content that isn’t created by a verified ed.voicethread member and they can only add contacts who are members. Teachers must use comment moderation before their students can use the content of other members, and members must be invited to comment on student work.

A class subscription to Voicethread is $60/year or $10/month and comes with student accounts.

DISCUSSION IN TERMS OF PERSONAL LEARNING

Animoto is a fun way to display photos and share them with family and friends. There’s not a lot of creativity involved on my part, but it’s a good introduction to what can be done with multimedia tools. Windows Movie Maker does the same thing as Animoto, but it provides the user with much more control over the production of the video. When I’m on leave I’ll have the time to go through my photos and spend more time putting videos together. I can see Animoto getting quite expensive, so I’ll probably use Movie Maker instead.

VoiceThread would be a good way to make an album of a trip with recorded descriptions and to invite my fellow travellers to make their own comments. It could also be used as a book review site where I would make comments about a book I've read and invite others to comment on it as well.

DISCUSSION IN TERMS OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

Advantages of Animoto

• Shonda Brisco says the “dark and somewhat MTV appearance of Animoto would appeal most to middle and high school students”, but I’m sure my Grade 3s would enjoy it also.

• It appeals to different learning styles. Visual and auditory learners could quickly create stories and messages. This "multimodality" has the potential to reach larger audiences (McPherson, 2008).


• With Animoto, students can easily access CreativeCommons audio and images. The program lends itself well to a discussion of plagiarism and copyright issues with students as it would be very tempting for students to use copyrighted material to produce their videos.

• I might use this tool with my students to visually and auditorally present a topic researched online. For example, in our Social Studies unit on World Communities, I could work with my students to find copyright free photos of the community and add some music produced by the community. My students could even narrate the video or sing related music to accompany it. It’s also a good way to introduce units and showcase student work at portfolio conferences or by embedding videos in our classroom blog.

Disadvantages of Animoto

K. McPherson outlines the following drawbacks to this tool:

• It can be time-consuming to sift through photos and the internet for “just right” copyright free music and photos.


• This web-based application can work very slowly on computers with slow Internet connections. That was my experience!


• The cost of $30/year can make it prohibitive to schools.


• Its newness – how to use Animoto in the curriculum hasn’t been fully addressed yet.


• There are no tools for fine-tuning presentations. Animoto needs to indicate the number of photos for the length of the sound, otherwise the sound can fade out prematurely.

VoiceThread

The instructions in VoiceThread would be easy for elementary students to follow. They could easily upload images, name them and add descriptions, with little help needed by the teacher. They would enjoy recording their comments and using the doodling feature.

VoiceThread would be a useful tool for foreign language instruction. Students could practise pronunciation of depicted objects by using the record button, or practice sentence structure by using the text button (Trexler, 2007).

J. Climenhaga suggests that students use VoiceThread to record book reviews and even have great "conversations" revolving around those reviews. Her experience with VoiceThread was with an art class who recorded stories based on their artwork. She says that one issue she faced was that the students aimed for perfection in their recordings. Many of them spent too much time re-recording their stories, kind of like getting the greeting on our answering machines just right.

CONCLUSION

Exploring Animoto gave me the opportunity to learn about a new way of sharing images with others, whether they be students, friends, or family. It’s a fun and easy tool to use, but if the goal is to involve creativity in the production of videos, the Windows Movie Maker program would be more suitable. In terms of producing videos on the web, McPherson advises that safe and effective presentation posting practices be discussed and established with students. He recommends the YouTube videos: “Think Before You Post” and “Everyone Knows Your Name” with regards to publishing on the Internet and developing a list of related safe social networking practices.

Voicethread is a more practical tool for early years students to utilize, though it is expensive. In terms of French language instruction, it would be a great tool for developing their speaking skills. I think my students would have fun creating and narrating digital stories that could be shared with their peers and parents.

REFERENCES

Brisco, S. (2008, July). Animoto. School Library Journal. 54(7), 64.

McPherson, K. (2008, Jun). Mashing Literacy. Teacher Librarian. 35(5). 73-75.

Trexler, S. (2007). VoiceThread: Sharing Media and Conversations. Information Searcher. 17(2). 31-36.

Climenhaga, J. (2008, spring). Highlighting Technology -VoiceThread. The Medium. p. E48.