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Our voice is our personal way of expressing ourselves, and sharing our ideas and personal thoughts. As I listened to the voicethreads of educators sharing ideas on how they would use social media technology in their classrooms, I was entralled to hear all the different voices and accents verbalizing their project ideas and planning as to how they might implement these tools in their curriculum. I was immediately struck by the realization of just how far reaching social media software extends around the world.

Social media gives all users an identity online and the opportunity to express themselves using their “voice.” In the article “Using social media to teach social media,” author Howard Rheingold talks about how “moving from a private to a public voice can help students turn their self-expression into a form of public participation.” When voices have a forum in which to dialogue and be heard, we are building the foundation for what might eventually evolve into “public opinion.”

What is social media?

In the article “Social media debate” by David Meerman Scott, social media is described as “the way people share ideas, content, thoughts, and relationships online. It differs from mainstream media, such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, “in that anyone can create, comment, and add to [the] content” in a variety of forms (text, audio, video, images). It can also be “changed on-the-fly” if it needs to be. Users of social media software can “comment on an item and see in real time how popular an article or video is and how many times it has been linked to or voted on.” It is also possible to “syndicate social media via RSS and mash it up (a video in a blog post, for example).”

In the online video “Social media in Plain English,” Lee Lefever describes three ways in which social media can help users to share their thoughts: describe, rate and comment. Lefever stresses the importance of social media in providing users with real feedback which can be invaluable to a business in terms of producing a better product, to meet the needs of the customer

In “Are you ready for social software,” S. Boyd identifies three main characteristics of social software:

1. Interaction (between individuals or groups, in collaborative workspaces online)

2. Feedback (enjoy having their voices heard, using online guest books, comment spaces, surveys and rating systems)

3. Connections (opportunity to build new relationships, establishing new contacts, identify others with similar interests and expriences

According to Howard Rheingold, social media such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, RSS, tags, podcasts, mashups, digital storytelling, virtual environments, tagging and others, all share the following three common characteristics:

1. all participants have the opportunity “to broadcast as well as receive” (“text, images, audio, video, software, data, discussions, tags or links, to and from every other person”)

2. power of social media “emerges from the active participation of many people” who, in a sense, form their own community

3. social media networks “enable broader, faster, and lower cost coordination of activities

When it comes to whether or not we should be taking advantage of these free online services, the opportunity to connect with those we don’t know has overshadowed how we might use these new tools. In the article “InfoTech: want to be my friend? What you need to know about social technologies,” Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson also argue that the news media has been quick to point out all the dangers of social networking software, but has neglected to recognize the increased “opportunities that this technology provides children and young adults to share ideas, debate issues, and make global connections.” According to Lamb and Johnson, social technology “refers to computer-mediated communication environments that connect people for cooperation, collaboration, and information sharing.”

Voicethread

A VoiceThread is “a collaborative, multimedia slide show” that shares images, documents, and videos with others. VoiceThread is unique in that it allows users to record “live annotations” while recording a presentation. In fact, there are five different ways to leave comments – by using your voice with a microphone, by using your voice on a phone, by typing the text of your response, by adding a graphic notation or by recording your audio or video file (such as a webcam). Friends, family, students and colleagues can similarly leave messages, using one or several of the same five ways.

A unique feature of Voicethreads is the ability for users to doodle while commenting. This allows users to draw attention to an area of a photo, to place greater emphasis on something they are making reference to in their comment. VoiceThreads can also be embedded on web sites, and exported to MP3 players or DVDs. A real advantage of using voicethreads, is that users can access and edit their content at any time, from anywhere in the world because everything is collected and shared from one place. This also means that whenever a voicethread is edited by a user, it will be updated and the new version becomes automatically available wherever it is accessed from online.

There are numerous wikis devoted to discussing the possibilities of using “Voicethreads” for student projects and professional development, as well as ideas for “best practises” on how to implement this software into school curriculums. “Voicethread4education,” “Think Machine: Think Voicethreads” and the Voicethread Ning, are but to name a few.

I found the Voicethread site easy to use and the online tutorials were most helpful. If educators are concerned about using Voicethreads on the open Internet, there is also “a web-based communications network for K-12 students available with the cost of a membership.

Implications for teaching and learning

In the article “InfoTech: want to be my friend? What you need to know about social technologies,” Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson describe why technology plays such an important role in the lives of our students. The authors remind us that this is “the first generation to grow up with interactive media, [and} they comfortably manipulate, remix, and share content.” Lamb and Johnson state that another reason social media is so popular with students is that “they want to feel part of what is happening in the world” and be actively involved in areas outside their immediate community. Relationships and having a sense of “belonging” are also important to young people.

In “Using social media to teach social media,” Howard Rheingold makes an interesting observation about 21st century learners in our schools. He says: “These young citizens are both self-guided and in need of guidance.” Students can use social media “to inform publics, advocate positions, contest claims, and organize action around issues they care about” (Rheingold, 2008). So in teaching social media, we can show students how they can use their voice, in collaboration with others of like mind, to effect positive change… which is a very powerful skill to foster among our youth.

In their new book, “The new learning commons: where learners win!” authors David Loertscher, Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan state that “learners may have mastered the skills of social networking for communicating with friends, but it is only when they blend them in the direction of their academic skills that they begin to develop the globally competitive skills they will need.” In the “Pew Internet and American Life Project (2006),” researcher Lee Rainie “notes that 57% of teens contribute to online common areas with creations such as artwork, audio and video, photos, and creative writing.” It would only follow that educators look for opportunities to use the social media tools that students are already familiar with using, in order to guide their learning in curricular content areas as well

After exploring Voicethread this week, I can easily see why this Web 2.0 tool has appeared on so many users “Top 10 Tools in 2008″ lists. The implications for teaching and learning in our schools are huge. As an “online media album,” Voicethread has the potential to engage learners in all sorts of new and wonderful ways.

In terms of digital storytelling, Voicethreads is a powerful tool for students to use to share their own stories, discuss books they are reading and respond to oral histories or current events. One interesting example I came across, documented a family vacation across the country, describing each stop with a photo and recorded description. This technique could also work well to document class field trips and share the experience with parents or an administrator. Other examples included students uploading their own artwork and then asking others to critique their work. Using the magnifying feature, this could also work for pieces of student writing.

Voicethreads would also be an effective tool in delivering professional development or reflecting on a PD experience. Our library assistants participated in an inter-school visitation project last week and I asked them to document their visits digitally. My original intention was to create an electronic slide show in the portal, but using voicethreads, I can now envision the library assistants providing their own voice and adding comments, reflecting on the experience with each other. What a powerful advocacy tool this could become in promoting their important work to school and divisional administrators!

Reflections

In “Best practices for social software in libraries,” Michael Stephens advises that it is important to implement “carefully chosen social tools that further the mission and vision of the library.” In other words, you don’t need to “take on” every new Web 2.0 tool that you come across, but rather “choose those that might best serve the needs of your users.” It makes sense that if a new tool addresses a student or staff need, chances are it will become part of our instructinal repertoire. Last week, Group 1 was discussing how there are certain Web 2.0 tools that we will probably return to again and again. Voicethreads is now at the top of my list.

This week, I chose to use several photographs of my mother as a child to create a voicethread entitled “A praire childhood.” My mother is 86 years old and struggles with chronic dementia. After exploring this week’s social media tools, I thought this might be a good opportunity to involve her in a project where I could use the help and she could feel successful in providing the background content. Together, we looked through an old album of photographs, and I selected several pictures that she was able to tell me about in detail. I was then able to record my comments based on the information she could remember growing up on her family farm. If she had felt more comfortable with the technology, it would have been really interesting to record her own recollections for each photo, using her voice, or even a blend of both our voices in dialogue. Even so, it was a very personal experience for both of us.

A Prairie Childhood