 Hi everybody, welcome to the SWC Spotlight, our final webinar of the fall 2018 semester where we get a chance to take a look at all of the fabulous things our colleagues are doing in their online courses. Today we are focusing on the amazing things that you can do with VoiceThread. So we will be taking a little tour with Angel Celleck and EJ Park and I think that you'll be pretty impressed and inspired by what they are doing in their classes. And before we take a look at what's happening in those classes, I thought we might want to start with hearing a little bit from students. So many of us use VoiceThread for discussions, we know that our students really love it, we're going to hear a little bit from them about how VoiceThread has impacted their learning and then when we go into our two spotlights for today we're going to look at some new and innovative ways that go beyond discussions that some of our Southwestern College instructors are using. So the first one that I wanted to share is actually a student who has transferred at this point but she was a student at Southwestern College last year and she also was part of a student panel discussion for Digital Learning Day. So I wanted to play just a little snippet from Dineo Mayne and let you hear what she thought about VoiceThread when she used it for the first time in one of her classes. There's also an attendee who would like to know what kinds of online activities you find most engaging. Well for me the last semester was the first time a professor of mine used this thing called VoiceThread discussions, something like that and it was really cool for me because there were all these different avenues that you could present your information that week so you could upload an audio file or you could upload a video or just submit text and so for me that was really interesting and just kind of allowed us to go beyond the text that we're constantly reading and writing. It kind of allowed the audio visual aspect of things to play in. Okay and we'll just pause it right there and keeping that comment in mind I wanted to share with you in an actual VoiceThread some additional comments. So this is from a page in a course just to show you what this can look like embedded into a page. I'm going to make it full screen so we can all see it a little bit better. This is an activity that I do at the end of each semester when I'm using VoiceThread. It's called a wisdom wall and I just asked students to share some impressions about VoiceThread and some advice for the next group of students coming in and the students who are coming in really like this because it helps them get a sense of what using VoiceThread is like if it's brand new to them. So I'm just going to share a couple of these. These were all student comments and they're shared with permission. So here's the first one. Delete your VoiceThread because VoiceThread is the new school and you're going to want it in upcoming school semester years. Merry Christmas. VoiceThread is the new school. So once students really got comfortable using VoiceThread they really could see the potential for using it as an online classroom space so I thought that was a great comment. Here's another one. Okay so seriously VoiceThread is such a great tool to communicate with like your classmates and even your professor. I was a little intimidated by it because it's very different but it's so much fun. You even get to do these assignments at home in your PJs and no one will never know. That one was an audio comment. Ah hello VoiceThread is actually a really good tool and oh it's just fun to use as well. It makes assignments a lot easier like way easier than just using the discussion board. So if you were you know ever asked to choose I recommend choosing this one honestly. You can even use it on your phone if you know you're having computer issues. So that's pretty cool too. Okay so I could go on but I'm just going to stop right there. All of those comments had to do with VoiceThread used primarily as a discussion tool which is the most common use for it. And if you think about students enjoying this tool having fun with it, think like it's a good way to express their ideas and learn. Think about how we could use this beyond discussions to give students even more opportunities for that in-depth learning. So that's where today's focus comes in. We're first going to hear from Angel Celleck and she created as a new VoiceThread instructor actually she created a way of discussing things with students that lets them take the lead. She actually has her students creating the VoiceThread. Hi I'm Angel Celleck adjunct instructor here at Southwestern College in the Department of Exercise Science and I'm teaching a online cross-training course this semester. This exact example of how we used VoiceThread in this class is based around the importance of water. So I had my students watch a video as you'll see and then answer a couple of questions regarding their own water intake. Am I hearing time? I brought my water we're ready to go. Okay so Angel tell us what you do. So you can see here that I'm getting ready I'll now play it for you a little maybe it's about two minute clip of me discussing the importance of water and how to how I get water intake daily for myself and some other little tidbits so we can just hit play and watch this. Week four we're talking water my favorite LeCroix I do drink tap water as well or flat water but the bubbling taste of the LeCroix is perfect. I have one of these every night with dinner and sometimes just as I'm working as well. On the previous two slides in your module you saw how important nutritionally speaking water is for your body. I just wanted to share one personal connection to how valuable that water is from my. So basically then I talk about an in-body assessment that we have here on campus that actually shows you the amount of intracellular and extracellular water you have in your body. So I made that higher level connection and invited them to come over to the fitness facility on campus and do the in-body test if they wanted even though this was an online class I'm just putting it out there for them and then the next slide you can see was going to is a video that discusses how diet soda and other high acidity beverages can affect your health. So even though they're low calorie they're still very low on the nutrient density scale and they can have negative factors with a lot of hormones and minerals in your body. So I had them watch that and then the next slide was another little just like a recap and then basically I sent that video very interesting with four questions. So let's get to the wow assignment. You are going to have to answer four things. Number one, do you think you're getting enough water? Now you can go based off of the reason. I put the questions up just in case they didn't want to keep going back and you know hitting play again. So they were to answer these four questions by making a new slide. So they hit the double square button in the bottom right corner and that populates their own slide and they answered these four questions. And then the second half of the assignment is to also respond to two classmates posts. So I can show you what that looked like. So here's our first one. I'm co-teaching the class with Melanie Durkin. This is her and she goes through a little example of her. Hi everyone. I just wanted to get on voice thread and contribute to our discussion about water. I wanted to share with you a little bit my tip to drinking water is to make it look pretty. I have some high alkaline strawberries in there and this is just regular water. It's in one of my wine glasses and I don't know when it's dinner time. It just is a little bit more fun to have my water in a wine glass frozen fruit. Isn't that the truth? My other tip. So then we have a lot of audio. This is the first one that I did in the semester. So I think the students are a little shy in putting themselves on the camera. So we had a lot of audio recordings for this one. But this is another student. Hello everyone. John here. Question number one. I am getting enough water throughout the day. I have a 26 ounce Yeti bottle that I bring everywhere. Even at home. I drink five of these today and that equals to 130 ounces or about a gallon. I saw it a lot especially when I work out. So I think my... So he continues to go through the questions. But I wanted to highlight this one because it's interesting in the response. It's just so great to have this kind of interaction amongst the students. You can hear in Joe's response. I actually had a look up what a Yeti water bottle was. And I actually found some couple cool ones. I actually ordered one on Amazon with the logo of one of my favorite teams. Going back to... So there he learned something from another student, jumped online and purchased it and hopefully now has a better habit of drinking water daily because of that good chargers or Ram's water bottle or whatever it is. And then we'll watch one more, which is actually with a video. Hello. Yes, I see that here. Week four, the wow, water. Yes, I drink enough water on a day. For example, on a regular day at work, I will drink three of these cups. These are 24 ounces. These we have them available all day long at work. I can eat as much as I want. I can eat and drink as much as I want. I am a chef, so I have them available all day long. And as a chef, I get so much, a lot of heat. So I get very, very thirsty. So by the end of my trip, I will drink three of those. And one of my way home that makes 96 ounces equals 12 cups. So yeah, I drink enough water by three per se. And when I am at home, I will drink one or two of these. 32 ounces. So I just wanted to highlight here the benefit of her bringing in the actual water bottles and such that she uses during the day and showing us why she needs to consume so much water. A lot of those students initially were like, I don't know how much I drink. I feel like I drink a lot, but it's really nice to see your colleagues being very specific and measuring out the water. So I would hope that that would inspire somebody who's not keeping track of their water intake and probably being dehydrated and not even knowing it during the day. It can inspire them to get the tools needed and to take action like some of the other classmates are doing. So I hope that was helpful. So Angel, how do your students feel about doing this kind of assignment? I think they like it. This is new to me. So I was a little apprehensive and just learning it all. Luckily, you guys have been super helpful over here in guiding me. So I think they like it. I definitely have seen an uptick in people now doing more videos. The other really cool thing is you're seeing a little bit of a trend. So you know after so many discussions with people, oh, yes, that's right. She is a chef. And we know what students have kids. And there's a little bit more of a sense of community in the classroom because we're talking so much about habits that we have daily that it's, I think, bringing up the level of camaraderie, I guess, in the classroom. That's fabulous. Yeah, I think we see a lot of that sharing happening in an introductory discussion. But if it's all in text and it's just once in the beginning of the semester, people forget who had that characteristic. And then all of that community building is just kind of lost. So it's great to hear that they're still retaining that and building on it. And they're now using the video more for sure. Not everybody, but they're more prone to hit that video button versus just the microphone. Well, and you guys as the teachers are modeling how you don't have to be formal. It can be fun. You can have kids running around in the background. Yes, and the one module that we did it in where there were more, I made it a point to address that the next week. And I said, it was so nice seeing all of you, like, let's do that. You know, because in the fitness world, it really is a lot of, you know, interpersonal skills and motivation. So, you know, they're not necessarily working out in a group environment, but we still want to feel like there's a support system here. And I think this is a great tool to do that. That's so exciting. I want to take this class. I have my water bottle. I'm ready on that note. Yes, cheers. I'm going to stop the sharing here so we can all come back together again. So I want to hear what you guys think about this. This is an online fitness class, an online CrossFit class. You got a sense of how the students are doing their work in an online environment. What do you think? So Tracy, I was thinking for child development, we do a lot of, like, you know, scenarios with a child, like, challenging behavior. So, you know, for them to give their ideas and how they decide, you know, they go through the process of identifying the behavior and seeing how other people are thinking, too. So I could see it, you know, them learning from each other as far as how to problem solve those types of things. Yeah, yeah. You could even have them work in teams and do a little bit of a role play and then have the other students discuss it or give pointers or... I mean, you could have them role play something that becomes a problem. Okay, how could that be resolved? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm looking at the chat here and Pam is talking about teaching writing and looking at sentences and written language and how could this be adapted in that situation. That is a really good question since I happen to teach writing as well. One of the things that I like to use voice thread for when I'm teaching writing is peer review. So students will upload their paper and in that case it is. It's just a traditional 8.5 by 11 paper. They'll upload an outline. They'll upload a draft, whatever it is we're working on and then the other students will give their feedback and in doing that they can use the doodle pencil to circle things so they could point out a certain paragraph that they're talking about and then discuss it. They could circle a word and then propose another word that might be a better choice there. So depending on what the topic or the purpose of the assignment is there's a lot that they could do with written text within voice thread. Thank you very much, Tracy. That's very helpful. And then the way that she set the assignment so that students would contribute slides to the presentation is in the options area. So we're still in the create area of voice thread and in options under the settings the second one here is allow commenters to add slides to this voice thread. So by default this is not enabled. So she just went in here and checked this button and now students will see an option to contribute a slide. So can you upload PDFs? Is that generally how you can? And see the item underneath this. If you wanted you could allow students to then download that so they could print it up, have their own copy if they wanted. So you can enable that as well. But wait, there's more. We are going to move from an online CrossFit class to an online art history class with EJ Park. EJ has actually two things she's going to share with us and they both have to do with using voice thread to boost the learning of artistry concepts and also to boost the analysis. So she was looking for a way to get students to really do that close analysis in a place where she could be in there with them versus just doing it maybe at home with their book. So that was where she started and then toward the end of our conversation you'll see where she ended up. Hi EJ. Hi Trezy. EJ is one of our pioneers with voice thread and she is doing some really great stuff with her students. So she's going to show us a little bit. We get a little tour today. So just before we jump into looking at it, how are things going? Great, great. Students love voice thread, especially because for the subject matter that I teach which is art history, students have said in independent separate occasions that they love playing the curator. And so that's been really fun to really see them be in that role. And I'm relatively new to voice thread but because of what I teach is art history, I've had to use it really often. Almost every, well every week, yeah, every week. And it's really a great way to have discussion, discussion section that is much more personal because you hear people's voices and oftentimes their faces. And also I love it when, you know, kids as well as pets interject for some reason, which is always nice because it adds, you know, personality and more interaction with students. So my experience with it, once I got it up and running, I think fulfilled a lot of things I wanted to do as an art historian pedagogically in terms of being able to read visual arguments but also being able to identify and apply different iconographies. And this semester I tried something new which is to realize the things, the world around them and how they can utilize the vocabulary that they learn in this class in all art history classes as a way to describe and even highlight different parts of what they see around them. So I could go, should I go into sharing mode? I'm curious to show what I've been doing. That is so exciting. Hey, so here are some of the slides and the prompts here. You could see the prompts relatively straightforward where first they have to identify what it is, but in works like this, everything means something. So you could see that this particular student using the digital pen that you could write and annotate has started to circle some of them like the violets that's for humility and then she's identified the Inglebricks and the lilies in reference to Britain's security and then the sword shape saw. And so it's kind of like iconography in art history is like trying to find Waldo and finding all of the little cues that opens up the meaning of an artwork or also these things that are in reference to the seat of Solomon. So pedagogically it's a way for them to apply the knowledge, apply the vocabulary of visual literacy and also synthesize the historical specificity of the time which is that like here as she circled the Inglebricks include themselves as witnessing this holy event and the whole fad of including themselves inside alters kind of like a medieval photo bomb of the enunciation. That's really very much a fad. And again, I can't take credit for that because the students said that. The students said that this is like medieval photo bomb and it's only through voice thread and this kind of more loose banter that I get those wonderful nuggets of updated art history like instead of donor portraits calling, equating that donor portraits as photo bombs. Because they get to use their voice they get to bring in their experience in a way they can't if they're typing. It's the best way to relate and learn because you really, I think true learning happens when you can apply it to yourself. You can make it understand or put it in your own terms. And this is a similar kind of exercise that's pushing it a little bit more forward in history where artists are utilizing old forms such as polyptics and then updating it with new subject matter and iconography so that they could see the ways in which artists use art. And not just in visualizing some of the different art historical references, particularly of the saints but those saints as relating to miracles and healing and adopted into a more contemporary context of the war and the sainthood of the veteran that carries you forward to as a way of a gesture of miraculous healing as well. And then here's another one that, this is fun. These are both about war but I think most people the more you look at it you can see which side they're on. One side is very pro-war in a way that they are glorifying the machines and the other side isn't. And in it you could see that the student has identified some of these animals because this particular artist Franz Marc developed an entire iconography of animals and color because he thought that they were more representative of human feelings. And then with this one, this is a future example and you can see them gesturing towards these squiggles. And it's really fun to see students actually draw on these artworks. There is this sense of ownership as you draw on them in terms of knowledge and knowledge retention. And this one's also really fun in looking at public monuments in the different ways in which public monuments relate and the origins of them in ancient Roman sculpture. I love this. This was a student highlighting the fact that in this particular period the Romans were really proud of all their wrinkles. And so she liked this gesture. Look at all of those wrinkles, my real face. And it was this style called virism which is to highlight the glorify the wise old learned man. And so the wrinkles are like hyper real. And then here you could see that she circled the cupid in reference to Augustus Julius Caesar and his relationship or the gesture towards Venus. And then in these arrows you could see the students gesturing towards the development as they relate to the different politics of the time from wise old learned man to idealized man to someone who's slightly worried to somebody who's incredibly worried. And all of that is traced through the ebbs and flows of Roman history that is made visual here. And so through all of that not only are they doing analysis and application of recognizing iconographies but also synthesizing visual culture in the context of history as well as relating it to our own culture in terms of the way in which propaganda is utilized to influence. And then this semester I branched out a little bit more for Voice Thread where I had students take photographs of things around them and they could have a theme. So for some of them it was like their room but for others it was nature or Baboa Park or the beach or whatever. And basically they had to take what art historians call the formal elements of art and the principles of the design. And there's a bullet point list of all of the things that they have to highlight. And in this one you could see that the student took a picture of this to highlight or her understanding of directional force. And she uses the annotation tool here to make her viewers pay attention to what she wants us to pay attention to in this picture. So with their iPhones they take pictures of the world around them and apply the vocabulary of the formal elements of art and the principles of design and also extend the synthesize that beyond the theme that they are trying to create with their presentation. This is a really good one too. Plus smartphones and iPhones that I mean they're really good cameras. I don't know if other people played around with their cameras but it's a rabbit hole when you start playing with your phone's camera and what it can do because look at this image that was taken by a smartphone. It really is quite gorgeous. And it's just, you know, you could tell it's just a tree and she, you know, he utilized this one to highlight line and the effect that line can have at, you know, this sense of radiating outward which I thought was really cool. And in addition to this assignment students also have to go to a museum and do a research project. So I've been playing around with the concept of field research going outside into or looking at their world more carefully. It's another one where the principle of design that they are highlighting is rhythm as you can see rhythm and repetition that's made visible here through the brick work the herringbone grip work. And then this is something I've been using for the museum research assignment. And I haven't received all of these yet because they're not through yet but this is something called Flipgrid that Tracy introduced me to. And students seem to be pretty responsive to it where they record really, really short. You could dictate them as very short one minute, 30 seconds of them inside the museum. So them out in the field of research as it were. And they also have to put a voice presentation together of what they saw in the museum. And so they're taking photos and most museums do allow photography as long as you don't use flash. So you can see different students utilizing that and embedding that with it. And that's all I got so far for today. And I look forward to seeing others seeing how people use voice thread but it's been a really useful tool and has really expanded my horizons in terms of an art history instructor. I could just imagine what people are doing for biology or geography or even cultural anthropology. Yeah, this smartphone has changed how online students can interact with the content in so many ways. And I love that they're looking around them, like you mentioned, they're looking around them with new eyes, they're looking, so what they've learned, they're now seeing in the world around them, not just in a book, not even just in a museum, but everywhere, the images that you shared just show how they're looking around with an art historian's eye now, which is amazing. Now you have a vocabulary. That's part of it is of visual literacy, not just in terms of the way they see, but words that go with them so that when they see some visual product and somebody asks them why they like it, they could use the vocabulary instead of just saying, I like the vibe, I hate that word so much. And because you're having them use audio, they have experience describing it. They have already done that before as part of an assignment, so then it's probably more comfortable to use that language to talk about what they like in a way that just typing a paper wouldn't give them. It gives them maybe a confidence in using that language that they wouldn't have if they had only written it. And they know what they're talking about because they took pictures and it's their theme and it's the theme that they chose and it's of something that they know, like their room or their backyard. So there is a sense of authority of knowledge that they have that they can exercise and synthesize with new knowledge. And so in a way you kind of develop this sense of confidence like, yeah, I know stuff, which is really great. And through that, you develop these young scholars budding art historians or at least people that are aware of visual arguments that are out there, which ultimately that's what I think all of us want to do is to create, but global citizens that are aware of visual arguments and things like that. But your students are not just aware of them, they're actually participating because of these assignments. So they're not just observing things and thinking to themselves, huh, yeah, that repetition reminds me of that thing we read in the textbook. They're actually seeking it out and then talking about it, which seems to me it's gonna solidify things in their brains in a way that, just musing on it themselves really wouldn't. Oh yeah, I can tell in their final projects after they do that assignment with their phones, the quality of the discussions change quite drastically after this assignment. And largely I think it is because they realize, oh, I know what I'm doing. All right, thank you so much for sharing this, EJ. I don't know about everybody else, but I am very excited about this. I'm inspired, I'm trying to think of ways that I could do something like this for my class. Yay field research. Do it. Yay, thank you so much. That's very exciting, really great. I do a similar assignment with the art review and I always have them take a picture of themselves to prove that they were there, but what a wonderful thing to take a video and talk about it because that cement's even better. And I really like that ownership that she gives them in so many different ways. So. Yeah, that really struck me as well that they have enough freedom in how they want to do these assignments and where they want to take that video, which museum they want to go to, what they want to talk about when they're there. And then the field research is wide open to whatever speaks to them. And I think the more we can do that, the more the learning really sinks in for the students because it's an extension of them. Okay, so E.G., I wanted me to ask you guys, can you think of how you could do something like that in the fields that you teach? I see some, I see sociology, so I see some on the street reporter kind of interactions with my students and people with a variety of questions and actually they can generate their own focus. They can, we had some students doing like what their Thanksgiving norm was and other kinds of things like that. So I think there's a lot of room for exploration here, especially with the student generating what they want the assignment to be. Yeah, yeah, that sounds really interesting. And as E.G. was talking about the power of the smartphone, what you were just describing, Yari, you could do with the phone. And then with VoiceRed, you simply upload that. So one of the video, if you wanted students to make slides, one of the options is to have them record with a webcam, but another option is to upload the pre-recorded little video. So if they wanted to do that on the street, then they could go back to their computer and they could upload it. One other thing I wanted to mention too with the field research assignments that we saw in E.G.'s class, she used a slightly different approach to using VoiceRed here, rather than having one VoiceRed where the students contribute slides, this project had each student make their own VoiceRed. So they did the entire thing. So she used the creative VoiceRed assignment within VoiceRed and each student made their cover slide, they made their other slides, putting in the photos, videos, whatever they wanted, and then they submitted the VoiceRed as their assignment. So there are lots of different ways you could approach this. From the new Char perspective in our leadership and supervision classes, I've always wanted the students to actually deliver a discipline letter, like for example, somebody's chronically for work, how are you going to speak to the employee, what are you going to say, and so forth. So I love the idea, I absolutely love it. That would be, you're right, that would be fabulous because you could even use a doodle tool and talk about the person's eye contact and body language. And if you use a doodle tool with video, you get to actually annotate as the video rolls and it's recorded that way. So then when somebody plays it back, they get to hear and see your annotations while the video is playing. That would be so powerful. Oh, that's a very good idea. It would also be a great help for people who want to go for a job interview. Oh yeah. To do a practice interview and get some feedback that could help them. I was thinking to Tracy, like for us, we have, you know, we try to get speakers and it's so difficult to get them all the way down to Juulavista sometimes because they live all over the place. And so having the students be responsible for like interviewing, like for my class with special needs, you know, interviewing a parent who has a child with special needs and, you know, being able to, like you said, they would actually be creating the voice thread themselves. And, you know, it just seems like we could get more people in to the class, even though physically it would be very difficult for them to, you know, make it down to the campus, so to speak. And, you know, today's webinar is a really good example of that, right? Both of our feature speakers couldn't be here live with us at this time. So we recorded it and with voice thread, you can watch it at any time. So you have that added flexibility. Yeah, with the technology, you can bring people in as speakers. You can have the students bring people in as speakers and then everybody gets to hear, everybody can talk about what they've said. Well, unfortunately, we are out of time, but I hope that you are as inspired by these ideas as I am and that you will keep creating in voice thread and share what you create with the rest of us.