Personal account updates

People of every age, profession, and interest use VoiceThread to have human conversations online. We are so inspired by the variety of wonderful work our community creates, and it’s very important to us that we keep VoiceThread as affordable as possible no matter how much VoiceThread someone needs. To help individuals ramp up their VoiceThreading, we’re offering two new license options: SOLO PRO: For individual VoiceThreaders want all the bells and whistles. … Continued

New VoiceThread: simpler, more accessible, and more powerful

For 17 years VoiceThread has been giving people a way to make their interactions online warmer and more “human-centric.” Now the biggest update in our history is ready for you to give it a whirl! Just go to your display preferences page and select “New VoiceThread.” We’re big fans of self-paced change, so you can also go back to the same place to switch back to the legacy version of VoiceThread any time. … Continued

Sneak Peek: The New VoiceThread!

This fall, VoiceThreaders will be able to try out the brand new VoiceThread! The core experience will not change, so VoiceThread will still do everything you already do now, and it will have a fresh new look along with some powerful new features. It has also been built from the ground up with accessibility in mind. Some highlights of that new experience include: A single experience accessible to everyone, including screen reader users Redesign of the VT Home Page to match the design of integrated assignments and the mobile app Fresh visual update to the media player to streamline, modernize, and enable support for new features A few new features: … Continued

VoiceThread Roadmap 2023

The arc of change in the teaching and learning universe may be long, but it bends towards a more accessible, equitable, inclusive, and human-centric world. We plan on shortening that arc just a little bit in 2023. But first, let’s take a look at what happened last year. 2022 in Review Google and Apple Login Anyone who has a Google account or Apple ID can use it to access VoiceThread now. … Continued

VoiceThread Roadmap 2024

2023 was a huge building year for us, and 2024 will be one where we can start adding great new stuff on top of the new scaffold. We’re excited to let you know what’s on the horizon! 2023 in Review New VoiceThread New VoiceThread is here, and we’re very excited! This is a major enhancement that will significantly increase human connectedness for both students and educators with its new accessibility features, a simplified design, and some significant new affordances. … Continued

VoiceThread Roadmap 2022

The last couple of years have been a challenge, but they were also a time of unprecedented collaboration, innovation, and mutual support. We were inspired by how hard everyone worked to support students while not compromising their physical or psychological health. Everyone worked outside their comfort zone at some point by teaching fully online, observing social distancing, building hybrid courses, and handling student and faculty anxiety. We are honored to be part of that effort and are excited to share what we’ve been doing. … Continued

VoiceThread sharing in VT Universal

Sharing in VT Universal is here! VoiceThreaders who rely on VT Universal for screen reader access no longer need to swap to the standard version to share their VoiceThreads for collaboration. Share with individual contacts, with groups and courses, or with the whole world using an interface designed with accessibility in mind from the ground up. Click here for the sharing guide What is VT Universal? It’s a version of VoiceThread that is fully accessible to screen readers. … Continued

Taking advantage of UDL with VoiceThread's Closed Captioning

This is a guest post by VoiceThread Certified Educator, Curtis Izen. In my online and f2f business information courses, I have used VoiceThread for a variety of assignments. This includes an “ice breaker” (Ice Breaker), transforming discussion boards (Transforming Discussion Boards), group PowerPoint (Group PowerPoint), individual research assignments to be shared for the entire class to learn from (Sharing your Research) , using comment moderation in a Microsoft Excel assignment (Using Comment Moderation) as well as students needing to create their own VoiceThread from scratch (Creating your Own VoiceThread). … Continued

Interactive Video Commenting

What separates good interaction from transformational interaction? Authentic engagement between people – student to teacher and peer to peer, not student to computer. We’re always working to make those interpersonal interactions easier in a VoiceThread. Now you can insert your comments into a video exactly where you want them. Comments will appear in the video’s timeline as a small blue nib, allowing you to see where others have inserted them as well. … Continued

VoiceThread Roadmap for 2018

What’s new in 2018?  No More Flash  We’ve reached the finish line! VoiceThread is officially Flash free, and the new HTML5 version has been released to everyone. It’s been a long journey, and we’re very excited to have moved on to this phase. The HTML5 version of VoiceThread offers: Options to speed up or slow down comments as you’re watching or listening. More responsiveness with less software to install and run. … Continued

Share Your VoiceThreads with Our Community

Educators around the world like to share their work and now VoiceThread has a way to let everyone know what you’ve been working on too! Our public Browse page is a great place to see VoiceThreads from different subjects for both K12 and Higher Ed courses. On the Browse page, you will see different ThreadBoxes for each subject. You can search for a ThreadBox about your subject and see what others have shared, then you can share your own! … Continued

New Comment Controls + Pecha Kucha and Ignite

Flexibility is one of VoiceThread’s strengths as an instructional tool, but sometimes restrictions can actually bring focus to a learning experience and make it much more engaging for students. We’ve just included two new features that allow instructors to do just that. Setting the Maximum Comment Length By default, audio and video comments recorded in VoiceThread can be up to 60 minutes long. Now you can set a shorter limit for comments for any VoiceThread you’ve created. … Continued

Look Ma, No Flash!

VoiceThread’s transition away from Flash has been an ongoing project over the last four years. Not unlike re-building a plane in flight, it required keeping in mind that VoiceThreaders all over the world were counting on us to keep the conversations going no matter what. It wasn’t easy, but as of today you don’t need any Flash whatsoever to use VoiceThread. The new HTML5 version looks and feels the same while offering new features like adjustable playback speed, streamlined audio/video recording, and increased security. … Continued

Why is VoiceThread using Flash? Why not HTML5?

It’s not uncommon for us to get the question: “why haven’t you switched to HTML 5 from Flash?” The short answer is that we already are well into a transition away from Flash, and we will continue that transition as quickly as it is safe to do so. Since 2014 over 50% of the VoiceThread platform has moved away from Flash, and that percentage will continue to grow a soon as other frameworks like HTML5 begin to offer the rich feature set that VoiceThread users require. … Continued

New Direct, Private and Threaded Comments

We recently released 3 new commenting features for our VoiceThreaders to use! Now, instructors can reply directly to students, give private feedback or enable threaded conversations on their content. Here is a breakdown of each new commenting feature. 1. Direct reply to a comment If you are the owner or editor of a VoiceThread, you are able to insert a comment directly after someone else’s comment on your slide. This allows you to help guide the conversation and give feedback directly to your participants. … Continued

Adding Multiple Group Admins

You can now add multiple admins to manage your VoiceThread groups! Take your groups to the next level by adding your teaching assistant, other teachers from your department, or even students as admins. Only teachers can create groups, but once you have created the group you can promote any of the members to admin status. -If you work in a support role in your school district or higher ed institution, you can now create groups and promote faculty members as admins. … Continued

The Student Privacy Pledge

​ ​ Student privacy is everyone’s concern. VoiceThread is proud to support the effort to safeguard student data by signing The Student Privacy Pledge. We have believed strongly in these protections ever since VoiceThread was founded almost 10 years ago. Ed.VoiceThread, our dedicated K-12 community, was developed on those very principles. This New York Times article makes clear the dangers of not understanding terms of use and the business models of your EdTech services. … Continued

Roadmap for 2015-16

With every decision and update, we’re committed to making VoiceThreading easier, more versatile, and more powerful. We want to share with you how far we’ve come and where we’re headed in 2015-16.  School Year in Review  New VoiceThread  We redesigned VoiceThread, top to bottom. It’s simpler, faster, and more deeply integrated. We included dozens of new features and a streamlined interface. *Released in August of 2014, and everyone will be using the New VoiceThread by August 1, 2015. … Continued

Khan Academy and VoiceThread

If you flip your class, you probably know how difficult it can be to create your own content day after day. That is one reason why we created an easy way for you to pull images and videos from other media sources directly into your VoiceThreads. Not only can you import media from your own VoiceThreads, the NY Public Library and Flickr’s Creative Commons, but now we’ve added Khan Academy videos too. … Continued

3 VoiceThread Features You Should be Using

This is a guest post by Alissa Harrington, VoiceThreader and Instructional Designer at Stevenson University. VoiceThread is so flexible and simple to use, that we often overlook some of its powerful built-in features. Below are three ideas to incorporate into your VoiceThread experience: 1. Insert an Active Link– An easy way to share a file* or website with students during a VoiceThread presentation is to copy the source URL and paste the link in a text comment. … Continued