Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Voki.com

On voki.com students can create personalized speaking avatars. This is a great way to teach the students how to present what they have learned. This can be used in many creative ways in the classroom,and the children will be motivated. Below you can find the voki that I created using Voki for Educators.(voki.com) I made this really quickly as an example, but am very excited to use this project with my students.This activity will allow them to focus on structuring their sentences and become better writers. It is also great for our second language learners because they will be able to hear their mistakes that they have written. Some words like Sacagawea, are difficult for the character to say, but you are able to spell it phonetically so the character can pronounce it more clearly. Some ways to use voki.com in the classroom: 1) Create a character to give a book talk/book report. 2) Create a character to persuade. 3) Create a character to summarize or paraphrase a story. 4) Bring a fictional character to life. 5) Teachers can use this to grab their attention and motivate them about a topic.(introductory) I even thought about implementing this for our IB exhibition. Children have chosen people like Elvis Presley, Christopher Columbus, and Rosa Parks. They can create a character on Voki.com and the character can tell a story about their life. On voki.com the children can type in the text and choose a voice,or they can record their own voice. Once you create the character you can send it to an email address or post it to a blog. There are many lesson plans and ideas for educators on the website, so check it out, if you haven't looked at this before.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Hopkins said...

Great ideas Deb :) I have a Voki on my blog and it's my "own" avatar welcoming visitors to our blog, stating the purpose of our blog and encouraging people to comment and leave feedback. The kiddos love listening to it (I recorded my voice, and they think that's just hilarious). You can see it at msspringersblog.blogspot.com if you're interseted :)

Liz

Kelly Berry said...

Incorporating Voki's into the students' exhibition projects would be a great 21st Century and digital addition! I can't wait to see their projects this year.

Students could also Blabberize their character. It's a similar tool, but you upload a picture and choose what part will be the mouth. Even a train could have a mouth! Check it out. http://blabberize.com/