VoiceThread for the Common Core

What is VoiceThread?
VoiceThread is easily my favorite web tool for our youngest learners. This tool lets the user upload pictures and videos into a slideshow and uses these images as the topic of an online conversation. VoiceThread users can add voice, text, or video comments on each slide. They can even draw on the slide as they comment. This feature works really well on the iPad app because students just use their finger to draw right on the screen.

How is this a good tool to help meet the goals of the Common Core?
The Common Core are our standards for learning in English Language Arts.  They set goals for each grade.
All grades have goals for speaking and listening.  With this tool students can describe their ideas using visual displays and add more drawings to make their meaning clear, build on others' ideas by responding to their comments, and ask and answer questions to clear up any confusion and deepen their understanding of the topic.  Those are the same goals we see in the Common Core.

Take a look at the kindergarten standards here.  

Take a look at the first grade standards here.  

Take a look at the second grade standards here.

Depending on how students use this tool they may hit on even more standards.  Students may be working on vocabulary standards like my first graders did in this VoiceThread:

Or they may hit on comprehension standards like my students did when they drew the pictures they visualized as they listened to a story and then found evidence from the text that showed where the images were generated from:

Finally, these VoiceThreads can be shared, like I did with the ones above!  So they can be used to communicate and collaborate with other people that are far away.  In fact, our next VoiceThread is titled Games We Play and we're hoping that classrooms in other countries watch it and add comments to help us compare and contrast the games played in different countries.