Commenting on Primary Sources

Getting students to engage with primary sources can be like getting kids to complete their chores. I have found students are more engaged with them using Voicethread. Voicethread is a multimedia tool that I have mentioned here before. In taking with teachers and presenting at various conferences and workshops, I have found a need for the steps and a sample. Below you can find a step by step on how to create a Voicethread. Here are samples on using Voicethread with images and a NARA speech file that was inserted via a converted PPT- these are real products with student responses.

Tagging for Visual Literacy with ThingLink

 
 
      I came across a tweet from Sean Ziebarth (@MrZiebarth) on Twitter about his students using Thinglink. I was curious...What is it? WOW...is is a great tool to annotate an image with uses for the teacher and students. Thinglink is a website that lets you add 'tags to an uploaded image to annotate. You may type in info, link to an image, link to a video, link a Google Document, or hyperlink to an additional website. This is a great presentation tool for teachers and students alike to utilize. Additionally, it meets the criteria for students presenting their findings in a multimedia format for the Common Core.

Here's how to use it: