Podcasting

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Lesson Plan: [|Voicethread lesson plan.doc] This VoiceThread shows how students from different classes and grades can use VoiceThread to have an asynchronous conversation about books. Students contributed to this thread during class time and also over their spring break. While I set up the initial slides, students were able to contribute with both vocal and textual comments. It provides a large amount of feedback by students on a selected topic. This VoiceThread was used with students throughout the 7th and 8th AVID classes. **Process/Assignment** During the third quarter students were assigned non fiction books in the form of biographies for reading. I imported a cover photo of each book and then added a book talk or review to each title. After the books had been introduced and students had begun to read, I had each class come to the computer lab to demonstrate how VoiceThread is used. After which students were able to log-in and add comments regarding quotes, discussion topics, history and chapter related questions. The objective of the project was to allow students to share feedback and to verbalize their opinions and personal views about the assigned biography but more importantly to introduce them to digital tools for completing various projects in the classroom setting. The easiest part of the project was getting students excited about using this technology. The difficult part of this project was getting the students to read the materials and then verbalize and communicate their personal views of the assigned reading. The students were instrumental in setting up the slides with Google images and Powerpoint slides. The other challenge was acquiring a class set of microphones. I thought that if I put them in sets of two that I might have enough from the STEP team participants. I tried to circulate the entire class of 28 students with a total of five microphone headsets. One accomplishment by not having enough headsets was that the students took the initiative to start using their phones to phone in comments to the voice thread. They learned how to do this on their own. It was rewarding to see them take the initiave and to also be successful in their endeavor.
 * Description**
 * Benefits to students **
 * Students learn to use technology.
 * Students learn ways to discuss learning outside of school with family and friends.
 * Students respond to questions and interact in new ways.
 * Students think critically about past their personal experience in relation to the biography of the person they were reading.
 * Students were able obtain past experiences from their parents and/or adults pertaining to the subject biography.
 * __Reflection__**

Even with the challenges it was worth the work to see the excitement of the students as they were introduced to new technology in the classroom. I tried to stop using the terminology “book report” and I started saying this is your digital presentation of your assigned reading for the quarter. Type in the content of your page here.