Asynchronous:

discussion boards are nothing more than written text.  Voicethread gives users something interesting to talk about---pictures!  What's more, being able to actually hear one another makes digital communication through Voicethread much more personal. 

Possible topics include:

collecting a series of images

script out short opening comments for each image that include a question for viewers to consider.

promote conversation

not to lecture through pictures. 

students are crafting identities

informal social learning

working through personal values

from access to information toward access to other people.

What do we mean by “social learning”?

e that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.5

Students in these groups can ask questions to clarify areas of uncertainty or confusion, can improve their grasp of the material by hearing the answers to questions from fellow students, and perhaps most powerfully, can take on the role of teacher to help other group members benefit from their understanding (one of the best ways to learn something is, after all, to teach it to others).

apprenticeship

But viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in “learning to be” even as they are mastering the content of a field.

relative "anonymity" of online discussions helps create a level playing field for women, homosexuals, students with physical handicaps, and members of other potentially marginalized groups, as they can participate in class activities without being stigmatized. Moreover, the format gives non-native speakers of English extra time to contemplate questions and compose appropriate answers.

teach students to find and learn information on their own or in concert with their colleagues. The online environment fosters self-motivated education.

Online students, however, can and do e-mail countless questions to their professors and frequently engage in a dialogue that would be hard to duplicate in the F2F world.

Students with family or work responsibilities are often unable to commit to a traditional course because they cannot be in the same place at the same time for 15 consecutive weeks.

teaching styles do not work in the online environment (just as some students have discovered that their learning styles make online courses unworkable for them)