Have you wanted to find a way to share PowerPoint presentations with others and have them comment on them? Perhaps you would like students in your class to be able to upload their presentations to receive feedback from others in their class or outside of the classroom.

Well VoiceThread can help you do that. According to the VoiceThread site, “A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) – and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.”

If you are concerned about privacy and only want your VoiceThreads available to the students in your class you can make your VoiceThreads private. Only those that you invite to view your VoiceThread will be able to see it and comment on it.

VoiceThread offers free accounts for K-12 educators. You just need to register by clicking on the Sign In or Register link in the upper right hand corner. After signing up for a new account you then need to click on the Go Pro! button at the upper right hand side of the screen. In the next window click on the link at the bottom that says K-12 classroom educators. You will then need to provide more information regarding your classroom and you will need to register your school email address. (This is the email address you have been given by your school). They will send you a verification email to this address so you will need to be able to access it.

VoiceThread has a special edition of their web-based application for educators called Ed.VoiceThread. Unfortunately this version is not free and will set you back $60/year to register your classroom. There is also a school version that costs $300 plus $1 per user per year.

To learn more about how VoiceThread works you can view this VoiceThread.

To learn more about how VoiceThread may be used in education you can visit http://voicethread.com/#q.b3352.i28616 and see VoiceThread at work.