Voki

March is not my favorite month.

I'm tired. The kids are tired. And this year, Old Man Winter decided to have a sunny disposition. No snow days. Not one. So, to make the sprint to Spring Break a little more...I don't know, fun maybe - here's a way to incorporate technology with langugae skills.

Meet Voki.

Voki is a way for you and your students to make a speaking avatar. An avatar is an animated online character. You can customize the way your avatar looks and what it says - and use your own voice to make him, her, or it come to life. Using Voki (which is free, unless you choose to sign up for a Voki Classroom account) you can embed your creations into your classroom website or wiki to showcase your students' creations or to add a friendly message or directions for an online activity.

Which leads me to how you can use Voki to add a punch to your instruction. Kids LOVE to "play" with Voki to make characters that resemble themselves or other crazy critters. They can also record a 60 second message for their avatar to say. Why not make an assignment out of this? Students can create an avatar for a book character and write a short script for their person to "say." They could introduce themselves by turning themselves into an avatar to post to your classroom website or wiki - or have their avatars recite poetry they have written in class! Students could research a person in history and create a Voki to share what they learned. While the fun factor is sky-high on Voki, the opportunity to improve writing and speaking skills is through the stratosphere. My students start to quickly see the correlation between the written and spoken word when they go to create their Voki critters. It's also good for applying summarizing skills, as 60 seconds isn't long to get your point across! The Voki website also has a lesson plan section that can be accessed by teachers for more ideas on how to "embed" avatars into the classroom.

Tip: You can create one account for your students to use if you don't want to subscribe to Voki Classroom (I don't). That way, you can still save their avatars if you want. Or, just have students log on to the Voki site, create their avatar, and embed it to a wiki or other online space you use in your classroom. It won't be "saved," but it will be viewable.

Try playing around with Voki yourself! Maybe you will find a way to add it to one of your assignments before the end of the year!

http://www.voki.com/