Learning to write code doesn’t need to be an isolated experience. With VoiceThread, writing code isn’t just about turning your ideas into lines of text; it’s about sparking discussions, sharing insights, and collaborating with peers and instructors. VoiceThread is all asynchronous, so you can lock-in when you’re in the zone and then share and collaborate once you’re ready, so you don’t have the hassle of trying to schedule meeting time. … Continued
The quote above is from Paul Lockhart’s essay A Mathematician’s Lament. In the essay, Lockhart argues that the way mathematics is taught in schools is often ineffective and uninspiring. He believes that students should be encouraged to think creatively and to explore mathematical concepts for themselves. He also argues that discussion is an essential part of learning mathematics, as it allows students to share their ideas and to learn from each other. … Continued
This is a guest post written by a team of teachers and VoiceThreaders at the South Burlington School District.
Our students have a lot to say. Imagine all of the opinions swirling around our topic of Bioethics in a tenth grade general science class! How could we hear from each of the 85 learners in our 4 sections of Biology, and allow them to share thoughts with students in other sections? … Continued
This is a guest post by educator and VoiceThread Certified Educator, Curtis Izen.
Each semester, I try refining or creating a new assignment. In my online MIS course, the students are grouped into teams of 4-5 students. Their assignment is to create a group wiki on an emerging technology in business. Using the wiki tools from their LMS, they are tasked to add any multimedia, text or links to make their wiki as engaging and informational as possible. … Continued
This is a guest post by educators and VoiceThreaders, Dr. Thom Tomlinson and Ashley Jo Allen.
We are a project-based learning, early college high school in Raleigh, North Carolina. Over the weekend of October 8th our beautiful city received a visit from the knave Hurricane Matthew. Matthew’s flood waters engulfed our school building, turning an award winning building into an uninhabitable wreck. There may be places where people would give up and cry about the unfairness, Vernon Malone College and Career Academy is NOT such a place. … Continued
If you flip your class, you probably know how difficult it can be to create your own content day after day. That is one reason why we created an easy way for you to pull images and videos from other media sources directly into your VoiceThreads. Not only can you import media from your own VoiceThreads, the NY Public Library and Flickr’s Creative Commons, but now we’ve added Khan Academy videos too. … Continued
How can schools ensure that science fair projects are fair? A recent article by The Atlantic details some of the ways science fair projects have been corrupted by over-involvement from parents and we would like to offer a solution to this growing problem.
This problem exists mainly because teachers can’t observe and assess the student’s work at home. Most science fairs are essentially take-home projects, so parents who mean well may be taking over much of the design and creation process from their children. … Continued