Primary Source Librarian Blog

A friendly professional space for educators to find information, advice, and support for teaching with primary sources.

VoiceThread Activity for TPS Class

This project is an experiment that I tried with the thirteen people who attended a two-day Teaching with Primary Sources workshop in Colorado Springs July 1-2, 2008. I had been trying to figure out examples that would incorporate primary sources from the 1908 Democratic National Convention in Denver because of the upcoming July 31-Aug. 1 When History Happens conference and all the wonderful opportunities for teaching the political process and current issues this fall.

I remembered that I had an army document in my basement from the Spanish American War of 1898 that listed Col. William Jennings Bryan as the commanding officer and my own grandfather, Abram Gildersleeve, as a soldier under his command. William Jenning Bryan was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1908. I took the document to the second day of the workshop, and during lunch I took five close-up digital photos of it. In only about fifteen minutes, Nancy White and I uploaded the images to VoiceThread, recorded an introduction, and we were good to go! Everyone had to register (just an e-mail and a password), and they immediately began to submit questions based on the document.

We had been working on asking strong questions of primary sources. Does the question matter? Does it advance knowledge of an event, person, or era? Is it researchable? Does it require more than a "Yes" or "No" answer? As you go through the VoiceThread, which questions do you think succeed, and which ones need to be eliminated or revised?

By the way, there are five different ways to add comments to VoiceThread. You can (1) record a comment if your computer has a microphone, (2) type in a comment (3) videotape a comment (4) draw on the image as you speak, and, amazingly, (5) click on a telephone icon, enter your phone number, and VoiceThread will call you back to record your comment! Wow!

There's still time to comment. I don't plan to close this VoiceThread for a few weeks, so let's keep the comments coming!