Joyce Valenza Ph.D

New tools: VoiceThread and BibMe

I discovered a couple of new tools this week and wanted to share.

VoiceThread (courtesy of my colleague Ken Rodoff) inspires a new brand of digital storytelling. Storytellers can easily share their own stories (in voice or text) around any posted image. 

The point?  A single photograph, capturing a single moment, can represent multiple stories.  This site collects those stories and invites participation in the telling.

You can focus on one image or create a slide show. Images of storytellers appear around the images. Users zoom in to see details and out to see the big picture.  For newbies, the very effective tutorials are themselves VoiceThreads.

The examples on the site are fabulous and will inspire many educators--a story about Flat Stanley's journey, multiple very quirky takes on a very odd old family photograph (we all have those!), Web  2.0 educators share greetings on a map of the world.

As a former American Memory Fellow, this site adds potential new dimensions for the creative analysis of historical photographs, maps, and artifacts.

I may play around with creating tutorials on it over the summer, but I can't wait to use VoiceThread with classes next year!  

(Just as I was about to post this, I noticed that that darn, but dear Chris Harris, beat me to it. But, perhaps, I have a slightly different take.)

BibMe is a free bibliography generator, offering citations in MLA, APA, and Chicago styles. It does not offer the teaching value that the reasonably-priced NoodleTools offers my students--including the very lovely new notecard features. My big issue is that doesn't BibMe does not appear to have the same focus and care regarding subscription databases.  In fact, databases don't appear in its citation guide. For MLA format, that kinda matters.  Please take a look at this thoughtful review from Crucial Thought as you consider this resource.

Nevertheless, BibMe's database of sources in multiple formats (books, films, journals, newspapers, etc.) gives your citations a running start. When you search, a list of suggested matches appears. You select the right entry and tweak, adding any missing pieces (including databases) to the generated citation.

Note: some of my test searches appeared in the database; others did not. 

Many students will appreciate the extra help this free tool provides, particularly if they also have a style sheet to guide them through the tweaking. 

In my mind, tweaking and learning are kinda connected.

Posted by Joyce Valenza Ph.D on June 13, 2007 | Comments (0)