Visual essays with Adobe Voice
Providing students with an opportunity to share their work with their peers is educationally powerful. Adding visuals and allowing them to look at their writing in a variety of formats? That's knocking it out of the park! In her EL classes, Mrs. Carolyn McDonald does just that.
Before we go any further, check out this video that helps give a better idea about the free app, Adobe Voice.
In Mrs. McDonald's classes, she requires students to write a persuasive essay. While that essay is an artifact to communicate a student's progress to Mrs. McDonald, she also asks her students to create visual essays with Adobe Voice. The students take their persuasive essays and create a video by adding visuals and their own voices to narrate their ideas. This process allows students opportunities for dual-coding, which is especially important for EL students and their developing English language skills. The app permits them to choose their visuals from a variety of sources and to record their audio as many times as needed to get it just right.
When the students have finished their videos, Mrs. McDonald creates a Media Album on Schoology and asks her students upload their videos. The students are then able to view each other's videos and comment on them. While discussing this project with Mrs. McDonald, she said that having learned from the first time around, in subsequent uses of the app she provided students with scaffolding to make comments to each other. For example, she told them to comment on what they think the other person's central thesis is or an idea in support or in opposition to the presented argument. Asking students for more specific responses elicited more helpful comments that were focused on the topic.
In the end, students were able to present their written work in a different manner and to take pride in it when sharing it with their classmates. Sounds pretty awesome, right?
There are some really great features about Adobe Voice. First, it's free! That's important to teachers. Also, it is the kind of app that has some bells and whistles, but not so many that it's distracting to students. When students have created their videos, their are able to share them through a variety of platforms.
Here are some ideas from different teachers about using Adobe Voice in the classroom (Source):
Before we go any further, check out this video that helps give a better idea about the free app, Adobe Voice.
In Mrs. McDonald's classes, she requires students to write a persuasive essay. While that essay is an artifact to communicate a student's progress to Mrs. McDonald, she also asks her students to create visual essays with Adobe Voice. The students take their persuasive essays and create a video by adding visuals and their own voices to narrate their ideas. This process allows students opportunities for dual-coding, which is especially important for EL students and their developing English language skills. The app permits them to choose their visuals from a variety of sources and to record their audio as many times as needed to get it just right.
When the students have finished their videos, Mrs. McDonald creates a Media Album on Schoology and asks her students upload their videos. The students are then able to view each other's videos and comment on them. While discussing this project with Mrs. McDonald, she said that having learned from the first time around, in subsequent uses of the app she provided students with scaffolding to make comments to each other. For example, she told them to comment on what they think the other person's central thesis is or an idea in support or in opposition to the presented argument. Asking students for more specific responses elicited more helpful comments that were focused on the topic.
In the end, students were able to present their written work in a different manner and to take pride in it when sharing it with their classmates. Sounds pretty awesome, right?
There are some really great features about Adobe Voice. First, it's free! That's important to teachers. Also, it is the kind of app that has some bells and whistles, but not so many that it's distracting to students. When students have created their videos, their are able to share them through a variety of platforms.
Here are some ideas from different teachers about using Adobe Voice in the classroom (Source):
- use it early in the year to create an "All About Me Video"to learn more about the students
- an alternative to a journal
- the teacher can use it as a way of communicating to students during an absence or as a means of flipping a lesson
- making "thank you" videos for someone in their lives (staff, family, etc.)
- creating visual vocabulary with pictures and audio descriptions
- retelling/summarizing a story/historic event
- making a video diary of a field trip
- Seminar students can create a "Semester Summary" highlighting what went well and goals for the new semester to share with their families
Have you used Adobe Voice in your classroom? Share your ideas in the comments section. Need some more support? Check out the video below or talk to Dawn or one of your DTCs!
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