Voki Avatars

I used the Voki site to create an avatar. It was easy enough to create a free account and after fiddling with the site for a few minutes I was able to create my own Voki Avatar fairly quickly. What do you think?

Get a Voki now!




What is a Voki Avatar?

Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on a blog, profile or in email messages. These animated characters or avatars enable users to express themselves on the web with a voice.
You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters--animals, monsters, anime etc. You can even have your Voki speak with your own voice by recording yourself with a microphone or by phone and uploading it.

Theory and classroom uses for Voki Avatars

I can see many uses for Voki Avatars in the classroom. They could be used to aid in instructing those who are more audio/visual learners or even as a means for those shy students who struggle with presenting information to the class. Since Voki Avatars read out whatever is typed they could also be an engaging tool for english instruction, helping students with spelling and sentence structure.
Once the students have created a Voki they can post it on a blog created specifically for them. When students upload projects onto the world wide web they are participating in Kearsley & Shneiderman’s (1999) Engagement Theory framework under the third principle, “Donate”. Students realise that everyone is going to be able to see their work, not just the teacher, so they produce work to the best of their ability. Avatars provide an excellent way to engage students in their work and ICT's, and they can be used for just about anything.

References

Kearsley, G. & Shneiderman, B. (1999), Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning, viewed 1st September 2009 <http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm>