Voicethread - An Authentic Listening and Speaking Tool

Whenever I use those listening exercise books to practise listening with my students, both the students and I will feel meh. 

"Again? These are brainless exercises!" 

"It always slows down and emphasizes the answers for a few times! Nothing is challenging!" 

"I don't want to just sit here and listen to the tape for the whole lesson..."

Students feel the exercises are tedious and easy, but there are really no better listening exercises I can find in the market for them. Yet, they know that they have to drill their listening skills in order to excel in the public exams. Therefore, they just force themselves to concentrate in class until they eventually doze off. This vicious cycle really bothers me a lot until I was introduced this tool, VoiceThread.

What is VoiceThread?

VoiceThread is a cloud application (i.e. no software needed to be installed) which allows group conversations from anywhere in the world in a central place. It basically is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to browse the slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (by a microphone, phone or web camera), texts or by uploading an audio file. Users can share the slideshow by sending others the link or embedding it on your own social media page.

The above video can give you a brief introduction of VoiceThread.

Why VoiceThread?

• Allow users to upload and store documents in a centralized place as a sideshow
• Can store and display documents in an organized manner as those of the same theme can be uploaded in the same slideshow
• Allow viewers to leave comments anonymously or with multiple identities 
• Allow private reply to any commenters
• Have a wide varieties of uses as it can be used for critiques/ reflection/ discussion/ project collaboration/ presentation/ topic discussion on each slide
• Encourage speaking and debating
• Teachers can make good use of the recording functions to tailor-made their own listening exercises or even set listening questions based on the comments collected from the slides
• The slideshows can be shared to a close group or to the public

Things to consider

• No editing of the audio file uploaded to the slide once it is published though the editing of images is still possible
• All the comments will be auto played. So if there is any inappropriate comment and the uploader doesn't delete it, everybody can hear them.
• People may leave irresponsible comments as comments can be left anonymously 

Demonstration

The video below shows how I make use of VoiceThread to produce my own listening exercise based on a murder case. Students have to listen to the recordings and jot down notes from the interview of different suspect. Then they will have to participate in a group discussion of which one they think is the murderer based on the recordings and support their choice with reasons.

Sources

Using VoiceThread to communicate and collaborate. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2016, from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/6538 

VoiceThread --a valuable classroom collaboration tool. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2016, from https://www.njea.org/news-and-publications/njea-review/march-2011/voicethread