College

=College Examples=

I am using voicethreads in a college course as part of an icebreaking activity to have the members of the course introduce themselves. the audio and video features of voicethread will add to the sense of class community in the course. This voicethread is not public, because i want it restricted to members of the course only. The course is ETAP687 is a fully online Summer 2008 master's level course for the University at Albany, State University of New York: Beginning online course development. I pretty much just ask them to introduce themselves, why they are taking the course, what online experience they have had and what they learned from those experiences.

In addition i am using voicethreads as a tool to assist me in extending communications and professional development conversations with a community of 40+ instructional designers that I lead. These SLN campus-based instructional designers are from 40+separate institutions in the State University of New York that participate in the SUNY Learning Network. They are members of my extended staff and assist in developing online faculty from their respective institutions and courses as part of the SLN program. (examples below.)

I am alexandra m. pickett the associate director of the SUNY Learning Network: [|http://sln.suny.edu] alexandra.pickett@SUNY.EDU

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I've been using Voicethreads in my college-level Spanish courses for about two years. My first VT exercises were speaking/listening activities created with PowerPoint that I uploaded as threads. My students were sometimes reluctant to try them, but feedback from several semesters suggests that most students benefit from the way in which VT exercises force them to listen to themselves and monitor their pronunciation, vocabulary use, etc. I've also had students create digital stories with VT, including reflections on study abroad experiences. Recently, I have started work on a series of interactive VT tutorials for Spanish language learners. The first of these is a tutorial on how to use a bilingual dictionary (see below). [David Thompson, Associate Professor of Spanish at [|Luther College]]

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My name is [|Michelle Pacansky-Brock] and I am an art history professor at [|Sierra College] in Rocklin, CA. I use VoiceThreads regularly in my online classes and have had tremendous success. I am leading workshops on my campus to encourage other instructors to also use VoiceThread and we recently negotiating a package of 100 pro accounts for our faculty in exchange for an a commitment to use VT in their classes. VoiceThread does not offer free PRO accounts to higher education, which is unfortunate for community colleges who struggle with budgetary conditions. Below are a few samples I've created. If you'd like to chat more about using VoiceThread or other emerging technologies in higher education, please contact me at mpb@sierracollege.edu.

//**VoiceThreads in Education**// - a sample VT I created to generate some interest from educators about how VT can be employed as a teaching/learning tool. I've received comments from all over the world on this VT, demonstrating the impact of the tool and web 2.0 overall!

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Using VT as a //**Visual Discussion Board Tool**// - this sample is from my online History of Women in Art class. My students gave me permission to share this example.

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//**What do Students Think about VoiceThread?**// I invited a few of my online students to share their thoughts about how VoiceThread has enhanced their online learning experience. Pretty great stuff! Stay tuned...hopefully the last slide will be populated with faculty comments soon.

media type="custom" key="833453" I use VoiceThreads for more than a year to help students start writing essays and term papers. It's amazing! Also I recommend them to read [|essay samples] before they start writing first academic paper.