Speak it to me

It may seem strange to bookmark a site that's full of links to other sites and tools, but this one just seems to comprehensive and far-reaching that I thought it was worthwhile to include. Video editors, teleprompters, conversion tools, screen capture - it's all here. If you want to explore video tools beyond Voicethread, or to work in conjunction with Voicethread, start here.

Digital story telling - stories are a great way to help students improve their language ability - this gives them a way to create something around that. This tool is more focused than Voicethread, and as a result less flexible, but still provides a similar experience and functionality.

This is a more involved audio website that can be used for assessments. This is a more comprehensive site for educators as it is created specifically to make online audio assessments - you can even set time limits. This is not a casual site - you have to put a lot of work into setting it up.

Podcasting functionality - great for students to share, but also to teach other students. Specifically for podcasting.

Podcasting - both audio and video. Another site, primarily aimed at podcasting. Nice explanation and interface.

A great way to combine Powerpoint and video - kind of a dual presentation. [Downside for me - doesn't handle Chinese]. Great tool for combining two already powerful presentation tools, either for teacher use or for student use.

One of the best tools that I know of for use in teaching foreign language. Very flexible. Use it to teach new content, to let students practice listening and/or speaking, for student projects, to collect native speakers comments etc. Note that there are two versions: Voicethread and Ed Voicethread. Ed requires a school account, but provides an added measure of security and functionality in terms of classes (well worth it)

MSU's Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) has created this free resource. I haven't used it as a teacher yet, but one of my French classes used this for speaking presentations. If I remember correctly, students entered in a classroom ID and then made recordings.

Audacity is a program used to record audio in mp3 files. Users must download the program, but then they can easily record audio. Files can be sent to teacher or can be uploaded to a VoiceThread as an alternative to leaving a comment directly on the VoiceThread. Many schools currently use Audacity as a recording tool in language labs.

Probably similar to Digitales, students create a slideshow and can add text. No voice recording possible, but something to explore all the same.

This is a PPT presentation that walks you through how to record with audacity. While users must download this program, using Audacity to record audio can work as an alternative to commenting directly onto a VoiceThread. Using Audacity, students can create mp3 files, save them to their computer, send the files to their teacher, or upload the file as a VoiceThread comment.

This is a better version of Mailvu. You can create an account, upload and download videos. It is very easy to create a video - just hit record - and then send it via email to someone. The recipient can save the video and then reuse it (as in my example uploading it to VoiceThread.) Seems to be a great tool to have students submit audio/video.

Another interesting site, this is primarily uses phone to record (I think direct online recording is better for students), which can be attached to pictures, so similar to Voicethread, the big difference being that this is one way (i.e. there is no comment back from the listener)

Depending on the reliability and quality, this can be a great way for students to very easily submit an audio/video assignment to teachers, and share with other students. They have a for pay version - 9.95/month for educators - which gives the added functionality of saving videos.

This is a really exciting looking site - basically allows you to invite lots of people into an online live roundtable - great for getting together to practice, and it's recorded. The downside it is only available to user 18 years old and up, so that pretty much ills it for K-12.

While this resource does not have to do with VoiceThread directly, I think we need to be aware of this problem and of resources which raise awareness to combat this issue. Cyberbullying is unfortunately becoming more and more popular with the increased use of social media, and teachers always need to be on the lookout for it in the technologies we use for our classes. This is an animated little video discussing the wide range of what is classified as cyberbullying along with the possible repercussions of cyberbullying. Geared towards younger students.

This appears to be an interesting way to create a dialogue between the teacher and student (not sure it is any better than Voicethread). The teacher records spoken prompts and the students hear the prompt and record a response, which the teacher can then assess.