Using Voicethread in Teaching

(Note: Please click my icon to listen to the instruction first, and then listen to your classmates' comments. You need to come up with new ideas which are different from others. Thank you!)

This is a practice of using Voicethread in language classrooms.  I regarded it as a discussion forum for brainstorming, inviting students to contribute together to figure out an action plan to tackle the given problem. I think voice thread can be largely used in speaking class. For example, we can raise some hot topics or popular phenomena around the world, like globalization or study abroad, and let students to analyze the reasons of them. Likewise, we can let them to further evaluate the pros and cons of them.  We can also conduct a debating activity via it, in which we can raise certain controversial issues and let students to take a stand and defense themselves.

I also find my classmates' Voice Thread very interesting. In Julia's work, she initiated a book review seminar, where students can share their favorite characters in the books they have read. I like it, because I think her practice is extremely suitable for readers' workshop or reading conference when we teach reading. In Ning's work, she created a cultural workshop and opened a window for students to know Chinese culture, also enabling students to make a compare and contrast with their own culture. In Alicia's work, she also made us to be aware of the cultural differences on school settings between countries. I like Ning's and Alicia's works, because they can raise students' cultural awareness through talking about specific cultural elements. Following their teaching modes, we can employ and develop more cultural topics for students to examine and present. I think students would like it and learn a lot from this activity.


Since it is an audio-visual presentation recorded in advanced and retrievable with the access to the Internet regardless of the limitation of time and space, it can be used to a large extent both inside and outside language classrooms.