Google Voice is better than chocolate

I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, but I've been a huge fan of google voice in my Spanish classroom. Few of my students have internet at home, but almost all have access to a telephone of some kind. I can give them performance tasks to answer, texts to read for pronunciation practice, they can read their writing into the phone, or they can just plain call me for help. Best of all, their entire message is loaded on my computer. Former friends of gcast's free service will miss RSS functionality, but the user interface is easy enough to navigate. Each file can be downloaded in MP3 format, and then posted on their ELGG social network site. Once they've listened to their recording, they can use it with apps like voki to give performance to their writing. Pretty cool stuff, and a great extension to what I do in my classroom that leverages technology my students already have consistent access to.

I'd love to hear other perople's experience using google voice in the classroom. I'm sure there are tons of creative and engaging uses I haven't heard about yet. Share away.

Image courtesy of Rod_Gabriel on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8628950@N06/2770856499/