A Pre-Reading VoiceThread

Bomar, S. (2009). A Pre-Reading VoiceThread: Death Comes for the Archbishop. Knowledge Quest, 37(4), 26-27. Retrieved September 11, 2009, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts database.

This article is a wonderful example of Voice Thread being used in a high school English classroom. I work at a high school, and we currently do not have an instructional technologist. All of our technology department is devoted to maintenance/upkeep of the technology; no one teaches the teachers about integrating technology. I was recently introduced to voice thread in another class, and I thought it would be great to teach the teachers at my school how to use it. This article provides an example of voice thread in the high school environment, and I think it would be very beneficial to an instructional technology person who was trying to help teachers use this website. In the article, high school honors English teacher Shannon Bomar writes about using Voice Thread to introduce the novel Death Comes for the Archbishop. The novel, a long-standing component of her department’s junior level English curriculum, was dreaded by the students. She wanted to develop a pre-reading activity to get the students involved with the novel and cut down on the negativity toward it. She worked with the school’s media specialist to create a Voice Thread assignment that allowed the students to make their own Voice Threads concerning various topics that would come up while reading the novel. Since I teach AP Literature, I am always looking for ways to introduce novels and themes, and I hope to utilize a project similar to Bomar’s during the upcoming semester.