VoiceThread: Faculty Use Cases

History

Professor Bryan McCann has used VoiceThread to bring together images, sound and text in a way that allows students to move through material at their own pace while exploring multimedia dimensions. He uses this assignment as the required preparation for a flipped classroom--students are expected to review the VoiceThread thoroughly before class and come to class with questions and points for discussion about the content.

While it's possible to ask students to comment within the VoiceThread tool, Bryan prefers to have them use this to get prepared for discussion, not as a place where he reads their comments and responds.

Public Speaking

Here’s a sample VoiceThread assignment from Professor Kate Al-Shamma’s public speaking course. You can see how her student’s recordings look in the image below.

Speech to Explain (7-8 minutes)

Focus on:

• Speaking Extemporaneously! (Never "read" from your paper)
• Offering Specific Examples/Evidence for each point
• Including your specific stories/personalizing your speech
• Clearly transitioning from your Introduction to the Body
• Adding Internal Summaries
• Using Concrete and Colorful Language
• Revealing your sources
• Developing your Conclusion to emerge from all that you have said

Review the Speech Feedback Form as you prepare your speech.

Presentation and Delivery

• You need to stand during the delivery of this speech.
• Position your computer camera so you can record your speech as if you were talking to an audience in the room.
• Situate your camera to include your body from just below the waist and up to the top of your head so that we can see your arms, hands, posture, and general body movements.

You can always record your speeches with an audience present. Feel free to invite friends or family to sit behind your computer camera so that you deliver the speech to them as well as face VoiceThread (link to VT below).

If you have no live audience, imagine that you are talking to particular individuals. Visualizing an audience while speaking on your feet is a wonderful way to practice any presentation that you need to deliver.

How to Submit

Submit your speech to VoiceThread below. Review the Getting Started with VoiceThread pageLinks to an external site. and refer to VoiceThread at Georgetown pageLinks to an external site. for further support.