Of all the Web 2.0 tools, VoiceThread is probably my favorite, so powerful, yet easy to learn. So when I saw Paul Allison’s email invitation to join last night’s Teachers Teaching Teachers session with VT developers Ben Pappert and Steve Muth, I grabbed my headset and logged in, ready to learn about VT’s new Groups feature.

I’ve learned to always keep a notepad by me during the TTT sessions to jot down gems.  And last night’s session was filled with them, both by the guest speakers and in the chatroom discussion.

In looking over my notes, I see I’ve highlighted insights shared by Bill Ferriter. I follow his blog and therefore already had an appreciation of his strategies for engaging students with VT in meaningful ways. Here are a few gems from last night’s conversation:

• We need to teach our students the skill of commenting! Bill provides students with guidelines such as “find a point made by someone else and respond to it.” To keep students focused, he limits them to adding only one new thread to a conversation.
• We need to teach – and model for – our students the art of “collaborative dialogues,” including the skills of “productive conflict.”  Challenge them to find something they don’t agree with and in their commenting, “respectfully disagree.”

As soon as Paul has added the link to the last night’s discussion, I’ll return to this post and add it.