Evaluating pedagogical Affordances of media sharing

I thought this article was quite interesting. I agree with many of the points they made about VoiceThread. I think it has many great features that makes it very useful in the classroom. However, as the authors stated, "social, software affordances do not, by themselves, guarantee that effective learning will occur." I completely agree with this statement. Simply have access to technology that can be helpful and aid in the students' learning does not make it effective in an of itself. The teacher must create, implement and present it in a way that is effective. VoiceThread allows for many different options such as recording audio on slides, writing on the pictures, adding comments. There are all wonderful features, however, the teacher must use them as fit for his/her particular students in order for VoiceThread to be effective.

The teacher should use a variety of features in VoiceThread in order to use it successfully. The option to zoom in an out on a particular spot on a picture is a very helpful option. This can bring attention to a particular word, image, etc. It would also be helpful to incorporate audio into the slides. This is especially true if the slides only contain words or a picture. The teacher can read the sentences on the slide and provide a more in depth explanation. The same holds true for a slide that contains only a picture. It would be helpful for the teacher to explain what the students are looking at in the picture and what significance it has. At times, teachers make the mistake of thinking just posting a picture is good enough and that the students will simply just understand it. However, as a special education teacher, I can tell you that is not the case. Anytime the teacher can offer assistance and a further explanation it would be of great benefit to the students.
VoiceThread allows the teacher to be as simplistic as simply creating slides or as assistive as providing audio and cues. This is a great way for the teachers to be able to meet the individual needs of each of their students.
For these reasons, I think VoiceThread is a terrific tool to use in the classroom. Moreover, I agree with many of the points the article addressed (as mentioned above) regarding VoiceThread. I particularly loved that the authors included the chart that gave examples of what each feature within VoicetThread could be used for.