Sharing Family History in the Cloud
http://voicethread.com
What is Voicethread?
VoiceThread is a totally web-based digital story telling application that allows you to place collections of media like images, videos, documents, and presentations at the centre of an asynchronous (not occurring at the same time) conversation. A VoiceThread allows people to have conversations and to make comments using any mix of text, a microphone, a web cam, a telephone, or uploaded audio file. VoiceThread runs inside your web browser, so there is no software to download, install, or update.
Voicethread promotes asynchronous discussion about posted subjects. Stories, maps, personal albums, advice columns, everything is possible. This utility leapfrogs all other applications because of its inclusiveness and simplicity. Once a photo, video, graphic or document is posted, visitors can comment on it by recording audio and video files or entering text. You can even phone your comments to the site. You can also make graphic notations and “live” annotations on the item of discussion while talking.
There is also an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch app available.
Voicethread has long been used in education. The collaborative nature of sharing in Voicethread makes it an ideal tool. As an example, the Voicethread below demonstrates how users have added their comments, and developed the sharing and collaboration in learning a language.
View this Voicethread in full screen
How can Voice thread be used for Genealogy
The Voicethreads below are examples of using Voicethread to share information about your family history with members of your family. The first Voicethread has 13 slides,each of which has a number of family photos with an audio comment by the author to explain the relationship of the people in the pictures. As you view each slide, you can add your own comment – type it, or record and upload an audio comment, record a comment using your webcam. To do this, you need to have a Voicethread account. See the video, An Introduction to Voicethread further in this post on how to do this. The Voicethread can be shared with family members. Send them a link, email or embed it on your web site. It is a different way of developing your family history, publishing it, sharing it with family members and obtaining some input from family members to share their memories of the photos.
View the Voicethread full screen
View the Voicethread full screen
Voicethread and Family History
There are many examples of family history Voicethreads on the Voicethread site. Here is a link to them.
An Introduction to Voicethread
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