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.