Voki: Put some swag in your lesson presentation!

There are many websites out there that allow you to create a speaking avatar that can then be embedded or linked on a website or blog.  My preferred website for this is Voki.  Voki highlights these 4  features offered by their website.

1. Motivate students to participate
2. Improve message comprehension
3. Introduce technology in a fun way 
4. Utilize Voki as an effective language tool 

It can also be translated into 25 different languages if you are working with ESL students. A few things that make Voki unique is that you don't even need to create an account to make an avatar. If you want to save your work you will need to create a free account. I can tell you from my personal experience that my students (who are in high school) loved these avatars.  They would always ask me to replay them in class even after weeks had passed.  I post them to my moodle site in the main page or embed them in a specific lesson. Here are a few examples of how I used them. I also plan on having an AI student create one today when I tutor him.

Summer Tutoring

I had the privilege this summer to tutor a student with Autism  with the hopes of enhancing his technological skills. I know we are always told that students in this digital age know all about technology because they use Facebook and have an iPod. While those are great tools and fun to use, they are very elementary when it comes to the skills and knowledge students need to be successful in our ever changing digital world. I have found that a vast majority of the students I have taught during my 6 year career to be very unprepared when it comes to the digital skills they will need to be successful after high school. The first goal I wanted to accomplish was to get him accustomed to manipulating digital files. Pretty basic stuff like searching for, downloading, and uploading pictures and music. I used the site We Video, which allows the user to make videos online with their video editor. It functions and feels a lot like the older iMovie from Apple. I had him create a very short video about anything he wanted to keep his interest level high. He chose to make his movie about Transformers; I will be posting the finished project soon. We grabbed some Transformer theme music to add to the movie from YouTube by using YouTube - MP3. I have also used Make It Mp3 in that past. Those are the best YouTube to mp3 sites I have found. Practice and Enjoy!!