Safety

As with any web-based project, student safety must ALWAYS be paramount.  Due to the fact that you can make your voicethreads available on the free Internet, it is important to consider safety issues.  A few tips:

• It is recommended that you do not show students' faces in photos
• If you plan to use photographs which show students' faces, you must:
  • have signed parental consent to publish the photos on the Internet
  • never link full names to faces
  • avoid giving out any information that places a student at a particular school, city, or other location.
• A good strategy is to use a picture (copyright friendly of course!) of a student's favorite animal or other object as their "Identity" when creating a Voicethread.  Alternatively, students could draw a self-portrait which you could scan and use as their "Identity".
• To protect student images and work, make sure you de-select the "Allow others to download original images and documents (under the "Create" tab, in  the "Playback Options" at the bottom).
• If you are going to allow others to comment on students' Voicethreads, it is recommended that you enable comment moderation (under the "Create" tab, in "Publishing Options" at the bottom).  This allows you to see and approve any comments made about students' voicethreads before they are made available for your students or the public to see.
• Do not allow students to share personal information about themselves, their family, their friends or anyone else in their Voicethreads.  Sharing personal information, especially if it is going to be stored/shared on a server in the US (Voicethread is a US company/product) would go against our Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA). 

Copyright Issues

To avoid copyright issues around images used in Voicethreads, here are a few suggestions:

• Have students create their own original artwork that you scan and use in presentations
• Have students take their own digital photos for use in presentations
• Select images from copyright friendly or creative commons sources (suggestions below)

Find copyright-friendly or creative commons images through a variety of sites and portals found in Joyce Valenza's copyright friendly wiki.

Information on creative commons and copyright/fair use can be found at the following sites:

• Creative Commons Canada
• Creative Commons.org
• Sharing Creative Works - short slide presentation
• Creative Commons: Get Creative - video
• Copyright and Fair Use in Teaching