Steve Muth

Teachers Teaching Teachers #112 - Revisiting VoiceThread - 07.09.08

Paul Allison — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:07:23 -0500

This July, Paul Allison and Julie Conason fascilated a 3-week Writing Project Institute for teachers where we used VoiceThread as the focus of one of our weeks together. In the middle of our work with teachers, we invited Steve Muth, co-founder of VoiceThread, and Colette Cassinelli, a technology teacher near Portland, Oregon who started a wiki that collects examples of VoiceThreads.

What will you find on Collette's VoiceThread4Education?

Samples submitted by teachers of VoiceThread projects made by their students

VoiceThreads used in professional development

Resources, including other websites that contain VoiceThread examples

Best Practices - tips and ideas of how to best implement VoiceThread in your curriculum

Subject area ideas

"This is your wiki," Colette writes: "Please feel free to add any ideas, examples or resources to the site and provide appropriate link attribution. If you are not sure how to embed your VoiceThread projects in wikispaces - follow the directions below."

In addition: Paul and Julie invite you to take a look at the "Narrative Discussions" from our Institute, linked below. We would love your comments on these.

VoiceThread Narrative Discussions
by Teachers in the NYC Writing Project's
Open/Advanced Summer Technology Institute
Family Camp by Paul Allison
Quality of Life by JoAnn Chen
Ellie Tells a Story by Julie Conason
Childhood... by Wendy Farkas
Life in Shards by Margaret Fiore
Honeymoon by Mat Gerowitz
My Loving Family by Julia Loving
Family Stories by Aileen Malave
Travel by Sonali Matani
Amsterdam 2008 by Julie Miele
My Running... by Beth St John

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #90: Microblogging our way toward global awareness 02.06.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:07:42 -0600

Some educators, including some of us who meet regularly on Teachers Teaching Teachers, have begun to find places in our curriculum for microblogging.

“Compared to regular blogging, microblogging fulfills a need for an even faster mode of communication. By encouraging shorter posts, it lowers users’ requirement of time and thought investment for content generation. This is also one of its main differentiating factors from blogging in general. The second important difference is the frequency of update. On average, a prolific blogger may update her blog once every few days; on the other hand a microblogger may post several updates in a single day.” (Java Akshay, Tim Finin, Xaiodan Song, Bell Tseng, Why We Twitter: U nderstanding Microblogging Usage and Communitites. August 12, 2007)

At the beginning of this podcast we explore microblogging with David Karp, the 21-year-old fou nder of Tumblr, an interesting new blogging platform that some of us have begun to use. VoiceThread founders, Ben Pappel and Steve Muth join us in this conversation as well. (Read more about microblogging below.)

In the last 15 or 20 minutes, (beginning at 31:14) we are joined by George Mayo, an 8th grade teacher in Maryland, and Wendy Dexler, a 3rd grade teacher in Florida, who joined each other at Educon 2.0 to create a Global Darfur Awareness Event which will take place on March 6th. (Read more about this project below.)

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #89: Is the tool irrelevant? 01.30.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:43:37 -0600

Listen to Scott Floyd, Tech Liaison for the Texas Bluebonnet Writing Project, and Ellen Petry Leanse explain how and why they collaborated on a project that resulted in this VoiceThread, as well as other media versions of the same story. Scott writes on his blog:

Ellen Petry Leanse has a powerful story to tell of her escape from the political unrest in Kenya during the presidential elections over the 2007 Christmas holidays. She and her 12 year old son were there volunteering in an orphanage as well as other humanitarian work. I first encountered her story January 15th on Guy Kawasaki’s blog as a guest post. Her writing moved me. Something inside of me kept saying to contact her and help her share what she and her son went through. As Google would have it, her email came up in the first try, and by 8:11 AM I sent off a personal plea to her to share her narrative through digital storytelling.

A Piece of My Mind - my ideas, thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned in education The founders of VoiceThread, Ben Papell and Steve Muth, also join us in this discussion of the lessons that can be learned from this one example of digital storytelling.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #86 Giving All Schools Access to VoiceThread-A Conversation with Ben Papell and Steve Muth-01.09.08

Paul Allison — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:08:30 -0600

Ben Papell and Steve Muth are fed up with the number of school districts across the US that are bocking VoiceThread. Even though VoiceThread was one of the most popular Web-tools with educators in 2007, it has also been unavailable to many teachers because of district or school filters that block all free websites or sites that allow for user contributions or that allow students to surf to unapproved content... or for whatever reasons. All Ben and Steve know is that they've been getting a steady stream of emails that say something like: "I love, love, love VoiceThread! I use it at home, but I can't use it in my school. It's blocked! Is there any way you can help?"

Ben and Steve are not the first developers of tools like VoiceThread to run into problems like this. They may be the first to come up with a solution that not only solves the blocking problem, but potentially makes their product even more attractive because it will give students of all ages free (to them), unlimited access to their own VoiceThread accounts that teachers can manage without using email addresses. Here are some of the details that Ben and Steve provided:

The Ed.VoiceThread network is a worldwide community where safety is built upon a foundation of accountability. All users are known users, responsible for their content and behavior. Access is restricted to K-12 educators, students and administrators, and all content is created exclusively by registered members of the community. Web services offering free accounts are blocked in many school districts because of child online protection policies, and are not eligible for federal eRate monies. For this reason, there are no free Ed.VoiceThread accounts and student email addresses are not required. Educators must pay a one time $10 verification fee to become a member of the community, with no recurring costs.

Schools will also be able to pay a monthly fee (about $100), which will make it possible for all teachers in the building to use VoiceThread with their students.

Learn more about this innovative plan on this webcast. Ben Papell and Steve Muth joined us once again to explain changes they are making to address access problems in US schools.

Ed.VoiceThread goes live on Thursday, January 17. Get the inside story on this podcast.

Chat Log

Chat Log for Teachers Teaching Teachers #86 - 01.09.08

Paul Allison — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:31:31 -0600

20:45:33 SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hi jrolle
20:54:35 SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hi mrmayo and karla
20:55:12 SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hi aram - welcome
20:55:18 SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hi jepcke
20:55:20 SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: welcome
20:55:36 AramKabodian -> EdTechTalk: hi susan and everyone...
20:55:37 jepcke -> EdTechTalk: hi susan
20:56:01 SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hi cheryl

Teachers Teaching Teachers #77 - Participation is the Most Important Part

Paul Allison — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:54:26 -0500

We were joined this week by Joyce Valenza and the co-founders of of Voice Thread, Ben Papell and Steve Muth (and many wonderful teachers in the chat room). In the spirit of producing content that is open to co-creation...

...we invite you add an interesting Voice Thread to this post. Either link to or embed a Voice Thread that would help show how teachers are using this tool in their classrooms or with their colleagues.

Click Add new comment, and show us a Voice Thread that you think is cool!

Thanks.

Chat Log

Chat Log from TTT77

Paul Allison — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:38:08 -0500

2007-10-31 20:48:07 [Message] SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hi lee hi peggy

2007-10-31 20:48:41 [Message] cheryloakes -> EdTechTalk: Evening!

2007-10-31 20:48:57 [Message] cheryloakes -> EdTechTalk: I wanted a front row seat.

2007-10-31 20:49:11 [Message] SusanEttenheim -> EdTechTalk: hhi cheryl

2007-10-31 20:49:12 [Message] Lee Baber -> EdTechTalk: Hello!

2007-10-31 20:49:26 [Message] Lee Baber -> EdTechTalk: Thanks for coming Cheryl! Hello Peggy