Am I missing something on VoiceThread?

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Permalink Reply by Mathew Needleman on February 19, 2008 at 3:37pm

I'm reposting from VoiceThread e-mail:

Announcement

First, we want to thank you for getting involved with VoiceThread and supporting us this past year.

Today we are launching a new service that's intended to solve some of the difficult accessibility issues of using VoiceThread in the classroom, as well as to create a place for students to work independently and develop their own portfolio of work. This new community called Ed.VoiceThread, is designed to allow simple, safe, and rich collaboration around multimedia within a secure environment. Built upon a foundation of accountability, all of the community's users are known users, responsible for their content and behavior. Access is restricted to K-12 educators, students and administrators, and all content is created or vetted exclusively by registered members of the community.

Web services offering free accounts are blocked in many school districts because of child online protection policies. For this reason, there will be a one-time $10 verification fee for educators to join the Ed.VoiceThread community. We need to have to have a verified financial transaction to adhere to a higher standard.

Our goal is to have entire districts sign up for Ed.VoiceThread, verifying all of their educators, and giving students their very own accounts, but we need your help to do this. We are offering the first 1000 educators the opportunity to create Pioneer Classes at their schools for $60/yr. This means that for about the price of a single day field trip, students can spend an entire year collaborating with other students anywhere in the world, creating digital stories and documentary, finding and honing their own voices, and importantly, creating their very own portfolio of work to document their growth. In keeping with federal regulations for schools regarding privacy, student email addresses will never be required for them to participate.

We think that the responsibility to provide safe and effective learning tools should not fall to the individual teacher. We've tried our best to empower teachers to lead the way without having to personally pay for it and so we urge you to advocate for a school subscription. When you convince your school to subscribe to the network, we will refund the $60 you paid for your class, making the cost to the educator $0 (which is exactly what we think it should be). There is a limit of two Pioneer Classes per school. Please contact us if you need help convincing, cajoling, and stepping on toes;)

Key Points:

- K-12 educators will still (and always) have access to free Educator accounts on voicethread.com - that will NOT change.
- There is a one time, $10 verification fee to join the ED.VoiceThread community. Why? To ensure accountability, and to achieve our goal of universal access in the classroom.
- We are offering a 'Pioneer' program for educators, in a sense, a mini school account for a $60 yearly fee. The hope is that by showcasing their own students’ work, educators can get their administrators to see the value in a school subscription. If an educator with a classroom account converts his/her school, we will refund the $60 fee.

Please rest assured that there will be no changes to the free educator accounts on voicethread.com. That is a permanent fixture and will not be going away, feel free to continue to use it just as you always have. We are really excited about Ed.VoiceThread for the classroom, and hope you will be too. We're designing this community and all of its unique features specifically with the K-12 classroom in mind. Please continue to give us your feedback, it has driven our development so far and that won't change as we move forward.

Here's a link to a more detailed description of the service

http://ed.voicethread.com/about/

Also, here is a link to two podcasts where we discuss the service and why we developed it:

http://www.edtechtalk.com/node/2822
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/podpress_trac/web/2458/0/2008-01-1...

Thanks again for all of your support,

The VoiceThread Team

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