Chapter 3

            The third chapter of the book, “Reading, Writing, and Literacy 2.0: Teaching with Online Texts, Tools, and Resources, K-8,” discusses creating a classroom community and connecting with families. One of the ways to build classroom community mentioned in this chapter is a program called VoiceThread. This program intrigued me because I had never heard of it before. With this program, students and teachers can upload pictures and media to one class VoiceThread. Adding media is not complicated to do and is user friendly. Teachers can monitor the class’s progress and posts, as well as write comments to students and posting questions. This program allows different ways to explore learning across all subjects in the core curriculum. Learning can improve by providing more visuals and allowing students to communicate with other students as well as the teacher in a safe digital learning environment.

            Confidence of students can also improve with this program because students can review and edit their work before posting exactly what they want to say instead of being afraid to stand in front of an entire class, which can be intimidating and scary. Student interactions become much easier through this program and can help teachers when organizing a lesson or project on a specific topic. It is an affordable price and I would recommend current and future educators, like myself, to incorporate this program into classrooms.