Teaching w/ Technology Tuesdays – VoiceThread

Robin Ladouceur, Foreign Language Resource Specialist, from the Center for Language Study gave a demo of VoiceThread. VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold any type of media (images, documents and videos) allowing people to make comments in 5 different ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) – and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

Voicethread is a free, online program that, like flickr, you can pay a small fee ($29.99/yr) to upgrade your account for more flexibility. You can use VoiceThread to browse already existing VoiceThreads or to easily create your own. You can start with images or video imported from anywhere (flickr, Facebook, Powerpoint, Excel, Word, PDF) and then add either a textual or audio comment.
Robin showed the following to explain, http://voicethread.com/#home.b409.i3113.

Robin showed created a VoiceThread during the session:

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Interactive Timelines

This session was delivered by Ian McDermott, Yale’s Visual Literacy Instruction Fellow. Ian began by showing a number of examples of interactive timelines you can find on the Internet. They included:

He also demonstrated a feature that Google has made available to plot Google search results on a timeline. You can use this by typing something like the following in a Google search: John Steinbeck view:timeline

Google Timeline Search

Ian then switched gears to go in depth on the Andy Warhol Timeline, a project he worked on as the Research Coordinator at the Andy Warhol Museum before coming to Yale. The timeline is available on the Internet but is also available in the Museum to interact with on a touch screen.

[youtube QZE6MmEo9HY&rel=0]

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Flickr

Barbara Rockenbach welcomed everyone to the Collaborative Learning Center, an entity created to bring together course supporters and others across campus interested in teaching and learning. After remarking on the great turnout for our “spring break edition” of Teaching with Technology Tuesdays, Barbara introduced Ian McDermott, Visual Literacy Fellow in the University Library.

Ian’s topic was Flickr (www.flickr.com), a website on which users can store, organize, and share their own photos and search photos shared by others. Users can attach metadata to their own photos, including tagging them with keywords, and they can also contribute to Flickr’s usefulness by adding tags to others’ photos. Ian began by asking for a show of hands to see how many people use Flickr now. About half of us in the room use it already, mostly for posting our own photos or looking at other people’s personal collections.

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Teaching Funding Opportunities

Yesterday’s Teaching w/ Technology session highlighted funding opportunities for teaching at Yale. Most of the instructional innovation grants discussed can be found at http://www.yale.edu/iig/.

Brad Gano from the Center for Language Study (CLS) spoke about funding for language teachers for purchasing course materials, travel for course enhancement, and support for instructional innovation. He also explained how the CLS can be helpful in the grant writing process. He also mentioned the opportunity for all non-ladder faculty to apply for a 1 semester leave for research and course preparation (this is not limited to language faculty).

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