Testing

Final Project Pen Pals via Voicethread

First, I have to find a teacher to work with. I’m going to approach Zanny who is a Spanish teacher who already sends penpal letters to a teacher in a Spanish speaking country. She has the kids write their letters digitally, then collects them with a thumb drive. She sends the letters to the teacher in the Spanish speaking school via attachment through E-mail. I don’t know what the teacher in the Spanish speaking country does with the attachments.

I would only work with one class, I’m thinking 8th grade. I have to set up an E-mail address for any student who does not have one. I am able to do this using my G-mail account. For example, I created a GMail account called greelymiddle@gmail.com. All a student has to do is type in a plus and a number. For example: greelymiddle+1@gmail.com. Here's the tutorial by Alec Couros: []

I just realized this does not work for voicethread, but it did work for other accounts like Pixton Comics.
 * greelymiddle+1@gmail.com || Username: g(greely)2011(yeartograduate)micdub(first 3 letters of firstname/first 3 letters of last name) ||
 * greelymiddle+2@gmail.com || g2001micdub ||
 * greelymiddle+3@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+4@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+5@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+6@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+7@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+8@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+9@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+10@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+11@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+12@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+13@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+14@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+15@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+16@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+17@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+18@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+19@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+20@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+21@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+22@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+23@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+24@gmail.com ||  ||
 * greelymiddle+25@gmail.com ||  ||

Alice found a voicethread about creating many identities.[| http://voicethread.com/#q.b11932] Here is a site in information about creating bogus E-mail accounts. []

Bogus E-mail Accounts We would have to pass this information to the teacher in the Spanish speaking country. If we are sticking to the 1 to 1 penpal activity, then I would have our students make an identity for the younger student, so the two penpals would share the same voicethread account.
 * g2011micjac@mailinator.com ||
 * g2011micdub@mailinator.com ||
 * g2011jimhen@mailinator.com ||
 * g2011johlen@mailinator.com ||
 * g2011janjop@mailinator.com ||
 * g2011elvpre@mailinator.com ||

Each student will need to create an avatar. I’m going to ask that they not use a picture of themselves, but to create something that represents them. Students can use sites such as My Wild Self or other avatar sites or they could use their "self portraits" that they create in art class.

Students would create an image that they would like to talk about with their penpal. I think Zanny should decide what the image should represent. This would be the photo they would upload on voicethread. Once the avatar and image are uploaded, the students can record their voices explaining the image they uploaded.

I would set up Zanny with a wiki, where the student’s voicethread could be embedded. Once you embed the voice thread onto wikispace, students can add and save the comments right on the wiki site. Very cool.

Once the Wiki page is created, the wiki URL can be sent to the Spanish speaking teacher who would allow the Spanish speaking students to make comments on any of the voice threads. The Wiki page can stay up all year.

If this idea is too big for Zanny, then we could scale it down to just having Zanny posting a photo and having the students (English and Spanish speaking) make comments to it. Hopefully from there, we could do more.

Example Erin's voice media type="custom" key="4082811"

Examples of younger students: Adjectives media type="custom" key="4082853"