Guest Blog: Thoughts by Tasha Cowdy

Tasha Cowdy is a Reggio inspired PYP teacher at Yokohama International School in Japan. She is exploring ways of helping young children make connections with the wider world. She blogs at Precious Moments. I was lucky enough to have Tasha teach my son his first year of school when we lived and worked in Azerbaijan. She is a great teacher with lots of insight into the PYP. Thanks for sharing Tasha!!

Using VoiceThread as a tool for student reflection and assessment.

This year we have had a school wide focus on using digital technology to support teaching and learning across the curriculum.  As one of my goals, I have been exploring possibilities with VoiceThread.  Over the year my Kindergarten students have used VoiceThread to explain their thinking, share their learning with family outside of the classroom and collaborate with other Kindergarten classes around the world.  Recently the students have used VoiceThread as a tool for reflecting on their writing goals.  I took photographs of student-selected writing samples which showed evidence that the student was working towards or had achieved their goal.  The students left voice comments reflecting on their progress.  I left a voice comment of my reflection and we invited parents to do the same.

I shared the writing goals VoiceThread at a regional 'sharing best practice' session and we got to talking about how VoiceThread could be used to support student reflection and assessment inany subject and with any grade level.  My Kindergarten VoiceThread contained photographs of a writing sample for each student.  In other subjects, video clips could be used rather thanphotographs.  Students could leave comments over a period of time, reflecting on their learning journey. One of the particular attractions of VoiceThread is that peers, parents and teachers can also leave comments and can read and build on previous comments.

An aside: One thing we found was that while our five and six-year olds were able to leave voice comments independently, their parents were not as comfortable using this technology!  We realized that we need to provide tech support sessions for our parents so that they can keep up with their children. I wonder what experiences or thoughts other people have had with VoiceThread?