Podcasts and VoiceThreads in the Kindergarten Classroom

Podcasts and VoiceThreads could be used in the Kindergarten classroom in a wide variety of ways. These new media could be used to teach writing/storytelling and oral communication skills. As some of the teachers who’s VoiceThreads are posted online have suggested, this technology could also help teachers and students connect their classrooms with the parents at home, or with online pen-pals in different parts of the world. These new types of technology can help children to learn new literacy skills in a way that is both novel and relevant to the modes of communication that today’s youth use every day.

One way that I saw VoiceThreads as being particularly useful in the Kindergarten classroom is as a means of storytelling for children who are not yet fully writing. At this age, most children are drawing and representing confidently, but are yet unable to fully communicate these same representations in words. In this way VoiceThreads could be used to allow students to explain their picture stories, in the same way that an author explains their illustrations in the text portion of their book.

Sally Has a Bad Day

Link to VoiceThread of Sally Has a Bad Day

http://voicethread.com/share/2344970/

Sally Has a Bad Day is a project that I did with my mum when I was five. I drew illustrations for a story and explained the story to my mum. She created a small bound paper book, and wrote down the explanation alongside my illustrations. This type of activity would be something I would love to do with Kindergarten students, as a way to record the stories that are in their minds as they draw, so as to preserve these stories for themselves and their parents in the future.

A similar type of activity could also be done using VoiceThreads. Instead of dictating to an adult to record their stories, students could illustrate a story and then record their explanations of the pictures onto a VoiceThread. As a classroom activity I might have each child draw and explain only one picture. The entire class’ pictures and explanations could be compiled into one big VoiceThread on a common theme. An example of a project like this is shown on the VoiceThreads website at http://voicethread.com/about/library/Kindergarten_Storybook_from_Leanne_Windsor/ .