After much collaboration with Katie, we decided to use Voki in my classroom. Voki is a tool that allows you to create speaking avatars. It allows you to design your own avatar using a variety of premade face features. You then add voice by either text or recording your own voice. The Voki website allows you to directly post your Voki to a variety of blogs and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, etc. The Voki website also offers a multitude of learning resources and lesson plans created by teachers across the world.
I used this tool to revamp an assignment I do regularly with my students. With the mobile laptops I used a premade Word document with cloze response “About Me” questions. The students have to fill in the blanks with information regarding their name, address, phone number, city, state, and some of their favorites.
The students had a great time filling in this document. Students used their State/Student IDs to fill in and check spelling of their personal information. For the "favorite" questions, students would ask me how to spell the words they wanted to use, I would write them on the board, and then they would type them. The students worked together to revise their work and check punctuation.
I videoed the students using the laptops and filling in the document. The students really showed their true personalities on camera and the clips turned out to be quite entertaining. I could not wait to get home and share the videos with Katie so she could get a better understanding of my students and how my classroom worked. We met that night to discuss the next days project.
Katie is a wonderful person to work with and we have formed a great collaborative relationship the past couple months. I am glad I could share this experience with her!
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