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.