Online Document Days! Is Voicethread the answer?

    It took me about three seconds to recognize Voicethread as what I've been looking for. I'm a primary document fiend. I love primary sources and the mysteries that they are. By working from primary documents I find that history comes alive with all the ingredients of a good learning experience. Students become curious, learn to ask questions, and discover why the historical narrative has (or hasn't) followed a certain arc.
   In a face to face class, I teach analysis of primary source materials in class in a format called "Document Days." Students walk in the door and the desks are in groups of five; there are folders with five copies of a document and perhaps a key or glossary to help decode it. I do a little introduction about the context of the document or key question we are going to answer by the end of class (usually "What does this source tell us about the time it was created?") Finally, I turn them loose into a variety of questions:
1. What do you notice? Write at least six observations you have about your source (repeating themes, tone, etc.)
2. Write at least three questions. Make sure that one or two of the questions are something you're sure you can't answer but help you think about your source in a creative way.
3. What is the historical context of the document? What was happening at the time it was created? Who created it and for what purpose?
4. Re-read your source and come up with a list of new observations/questions.

For the last step I pair students together who worked with different sources and have them share their findings. We come back together and brainstorm the answer to the big question: What does this source tell us about the time in which it was created? What does it tell us about how history about this time period is written?
     Document Days are often students' favorite days in class. Students struggle and learn, breakthrough, get frustrated, try again, get lost, get overwhelmed, try again. It's magic. And as a teacher I get to model the big thing I have to offer - an enthusiasm for the discipline and a model of analytical thinking. Heretofore, I have felt a sense of doom for my online students. Assigning a primary source reading and then hosting a forum to discuss it is a far cry from all gathering around tables to puzzle it out together and then analyze it in its context. Enter Voicethread, the online tool to make a table to gather around and free up students to write or speak their comments.
   To access Voicethread, students only need to click on the link and submit their comments via writing, audio only or video. Using the doodle tool, we can draw on the document bringing our attention to different sections of the source, pose questions and generally share our ideas meaningfully (and how we choose to do so). Enthusiasm can be better communicated, student feedback will be immediate and the feeling of all working on something together will be much more possible. I'm hopeful that Voicethread can be the stand in for document day.
     So try it! The Voicethread below is one of my favorites, usually the opening exercise for the class on the Revolutionary Era in U.S. Women's History and U.S. History I. It's a cartoon made in England before the Revolution (or the American Rebellion, as it is sometimes called in English History).