Using Digital VoiceThreads to Promote 21st Century Learning

Abstract

The ever-changing world of technology in the 21st century necessitates that teachers develop new ways of teaching to prepare students for new ways of learning (Collins & Halverson, 2009; Richardson, 2006). The increased use of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, online dictionaries, and thesauri provides non-traditional venues for teaching, learning, assessing, and engaging adolescent learners (Narkon, Wells, & Segal, 2011). Without question, students in the middle grades are drawn to the technologies of the 21st century (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). They are digital natives who are growing up with the newer forms of communication in their social worlds and have come to expect similar approaches in their academic environments (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Prensky, 2001). Technology is so prevalent in the lives of middle grades learners that it is now reflected as an anchor statement for the Common Core State Standards Initiative (2010): Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. For the past decade, students have been using technology in this way in their home lives. Now, this technology emerges in their school lives.We conducted a study with eight teachers across the primary, middle, and secondary levels who had unanimously expressed enthusiasm for learning innovative, forms of communicating the content of their subject areas. In this article, we chronicle the experiences and reactions of two middle grades language arts teachers as they incorporated a discussion tool known as VoiceThread in their classrooms. Kellie used VoiceThread with her students in place of the typical book review, and Emily taught her students how to write, illustrate, and talk about poetry in an online space. We first explore VoiceThread as a discussion tool and explain how it was used in the middle grades language arts classrooms. Then we explore ways teachers can use VoiceThread across the curriculum. Finally, we offer some concluding thoughts about the use of VoiceThread in middle grades classrooms.VoiceThread as a teaching and learning tool to promote discussionVoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia presentation tool that allows students to record their voices and upload images and text to react to or describe selected content. This Web 2.0 tool enables students to use their recorded voices to share their thinking and creative responses with a wide audience in an online environment. The VoiceThread website (www.VoiceThread.com) is easy to navigate, contains numerous examples, and allows both students and teachers to vary the assignment to coordinate with school, state, and national standards.Teaching methods involving discussion in which students are encouraged to express their ideas and make their reasoning explicit have been shown to have a positive effect on cognitive development and on the learning of new content (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Mercer & Littleton, 2007). VoiceThread enables discussion within an online space, addressing 21st century learning skills and providing a motivating, alternative means for engaging adolescent learners in tasks (e.g., book reviews and poetry writing) that, in their conventional forms, have been met with limited enthusiasm.Our study adds to the growing body of research on the use of VoiceThread in the classroom environment, which has shown positive results. In a recent study, the researchers replaced the typical journal writing experience with various Web 2.0 strategies, including VoiceThread, and found the approaches to be viable, motivating means of facilitating reflection (Smith & Dobson, 2009).Online book reviews: Kellie's sixth grade language arts classResearch suggests that students' positive attitudes about reading decrease over time (McKenna, 2002; McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995), often beginning with what has been referred to as the fourth grade slump (Chall & Jacobs, 2003), during which concepts, vocabulary, and informational text begin to pose challenges for readers already struggling with print (Chall & Conrad, 1991; National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). …