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VoiceThreads might best be described as interactive media albums

The technology is particularly accessible because viewers can comment using just about any technology -- including a good old landline. "We've tried to make it fairly universal in access," says Ben Papell. "If you don't have a microphone

when he discovered he could engage his kids online in a collaborative, multimedia slide show called a VoiceThread, he decided to see if he could use it to, as he puts it, "steal some of their online minutes."

2. Incorporate listening and drawing activities with Pear Deck: Pear Deck is the perfect way to make your Google Slides interactive. Try using the Pear Deck Chrome extension for listening and drawing activities: Add a Pear Deck interactive “Drawing” slide and read a description aloud.For example, I will read the following description aloud (in Spanish) to my Spanish I classes: “The boy is tall, thin, and has black, curly hair and green eyes. The boy is feeling happy because it is warm and sunny outside. He likes to listen to music and read, but he does not like to study or play sports.”As I read off this description, students draw what they hear. Once their drawings are complete, I ask them to restate what they drew aloud. You can also ask them to write about what they drew. Students are enthused when I project all of their drawings on the board—each student’s drawing is different and has its own style, even though everyone heard the same description.

MovieTalk works because it links meaning between the language used by the teacher to the images on the screen. In other words, it makes the linguistic input comprehensible to the student. “Comprehensible” of course, is a bit of a gray term—meaning that something is reasonably able to be understood by the audience—and it is up to the teacher to employ skills such as teaching to the eyes and using comprehension checks to guarantee that the comprehensible language is actually comprehended.

Sometimes, I select MovieTalks because of their topic: the content relates to something that we are studying or discussing in class. Other times, I select MovieTalks because of the vocabulary: I know that I can talk about the video using the same words that I am working with in class with my students. And still other times, I select MovieTalks because they are just so dang fun and easy and I plop them into the middle of a unit for no reason at all!

If you’re using new technology, give it a trial run. It’s hard to imagine anything less engaging for students than sitting around waiting while you try to load that video over a poor internet connection or figure out all the glitches with that awesome online game.Do your trial and error ahead of time, before you’re demonstrating media to the class.

And one of the best ways to access them is with an innovative tool called FluentU.