VoiceThread: Introduction to Surrey Libraries Website
I got to know about VoiceThread about three weeks ago during the first week’s class, on Affordance. I checked its About page and fell for it, after seeing the five different ways one can comment. Considering commenting by video, you don’t have to record your video comments, save it, and then upload it to the site. With a webcam attached to the computer, VoiceThread captures your video comment right into the site. Another interesting one is about audio comments, which can be made via telephone. See a demo on commenting by telephone.
The NYPL uses VoiceThread to share information about some of its digital gallery. Libraries, archives, and museums can also use VoiceThread to showcase some of their digital collections. Another way of using VoiceThread in libraries is for creating introductory videos to some of their services. Some are
- How to use library catalogue
- How to self checkout items
- Introduction to the Library’s website
- Accessing Library’s Wi-Fi network
I used VoiceThread to introduce the Surrey Libraries website homepage. With the aid of a free screen capturing tool, Jing, I captured images of the homepage of the website. After uploading these images into VoiceThread, they were converted into video clips after adding audio comments on the images. Jing also could capture video clips from the computer screen, and be uploaded into VoiceThread.
I found this experience fulfilling and would be trying other tools, like Glogster to share information in social media sites.
This is a great use of multiple technology tools. I’ve used Jing before, but one drawback was that I had to record my narration in real-time, while I was performing the screen capture. If you misspeak, you basically have to start the whole process again. By using VoiceThread to capture the audio, you were able to combine the visual elements and audio elements separately, which gives you more than one chance to get it right. That’s a really excellent idea, and one I will make use of the future. Thanks for the great example.
Thank you for the comment. Another good thing with the audio recording is that you can record part of your script, pause, get yourself “readjusted” and continue. With this, you don’t have to re-record a two-minutes script, just because the last ten seconds had errors.
Doyin, this is quite impressive! Thank you for taking so much time to make such a great example. I definitely think this tool can be useful for libraries to explain and express their services to patrons via the web. In busy systems, I can also imagine computer kiosks set up with these videos available to be played for patrons to learn how to use the system and library.
Sure, it took me some time to get to it. But I enjoyed every time I spent in the creation. Thank you for mentioning setting up computer kiosks for such video collection, knowing that first time visitors to the library would not have got a library card.
This knowledge object that you have created on VoiceThread has its own special charm. My sense is that when we are freed up to try something completely new, freed from the concern of being judged, we can often surprise ourselves. I think that’s why this project was such a great experience for so many in class.