Yes ~ another technology success! I have created my first Voice Thread! After very recently using iMovie to create a digital story, but quickly discovering that while iMovie would be a tool that I would use again, I probably would not have my little kinder kiddos use it themselves (or even with support). However, I still liked the idea of the kids creating something similar to the recent digital story that I had created with their own writing. I am also always looking for authentic audiences for my kiddos to share their writing with, but had not yet found a program that is easy to use for both my students and myself. Voice Thread looked promising, so I tried it out.
I was amazed with the ease of the program. If I can teach myself to use it, it really can’t be that difficult (and it wasn’t). I started by creating a short digital story about my family and very quickly was able to think of some meaningful ways in which my students could create their own Voice Threads.
In kindergarten,we create many class books, with each child contributing their own page. I would love to make these books digital and easily sharable with their families. My plan would be for the children to use iPads to take photos of their individual page for the class book. Either I could load their images into Voice Thread, or they could even do it with some support. They could then record themselves reading their page. Voila! We will have our own digital storybooks!
The boys and girls also write their own books, both informational and narrative. Again, we could take photos of the pages in their books and I can upload into Voice Thread so each child can create his/her own digital story. I could then have each child narrate each page of their book into their own Voice Thread ~ creating their own digital stories! These could then also be easily shared with parents who could then comment on their children’s stories and continue to share with other family members near and far. This looks like a great tool for us!
After spending a great deal of time researching and working on my Trends in Ed Tech presentation on Mashups, I was actually excited about the newest project ~ CREATING a mashup. I was also excited to realize that I’ve already created mashups, without ever knowing it. Every year, I create a keepsake slideshow for my little kinder kids and their families combing all the photos I had taken throughout the year and with music that is meaningful to both my students, their parents, and me. So when I thought about this new project, I thought, “Well, I got this!”
Thinking of a topic wasn’t too difficult. I thought of many and then quickly narrowed it down. I made a twist on the slideshow I make for my kiddos and used some of their pictures from the last couple of years to highlight the reasons why I teach. Using narration was new to me, but writing the script came pretty easily. I then set to work in iMovie. Although I never used this program before to CREATE my slideshow, I found it relatively easy to navigate. I actually had fun aligning my pictures to match the music and my script.
With my project saved and the only step left was to publish it on YouTube (or so I thought), I was feeling really good about it. Although it took a long time to create, I was very happy not just with the final product, but also with my ability to learn a new program.
Then…trouble started! I couldn’t re-open the project I had just created. After a great deal of hunting and trouble shooting, I figured out the problem I was having was an issue with using an out-of-date version of iMovie. That’s where my technical trouble shooting hit a wall.
Thanks to the help from a mastermind techie, my project was recovered! I also learned that I can’t just save my project to the desktop and then drag it into YouTube. I had no idea that I needed to export it. I’m learning something new all the time! So now, after shedding both tears of joy and tears of frustration, my project is on YouTube for the world to enjoy.
So, would I create an digital story again? Yes. Now that the technical issues have hopefully been resolved, I will definitely try my hand again at creating another digital story. Unfortunately, the most purposeful uses I can think of are creating a project FOR my students, such as the slideshows I’ve created in the past and personal uses. The amount of time and skills required to create such a project present great challenges for me to create a project WITH my kinder kiddos or for them to be able to create their own projects.
