Voki- the talking avatar!

I have often wondered whether these animated avatars were difficult to create but I honestly did not even need to read the instructions first; it was that simple. The avatars are able to be customised by choosing the character heads, eyes, mouth and even make up.

The first time I saw a 'voki' I thought of the concept cartoons that our Lecturer for Science Pedagogy, Dr. Rosie Thrupp, had taught us about.

The idea was that you could have a poster of four students and little speech bubbles of them talking about their idea on a particular topic. It is a great way to start class discussion and engage the students without enraging them as Prensky (2005) would say.

These concept cartoons are now being tailored to meet the needs of Indigenous, ESL and rural students and I think that it would be very interesting to develop avatars that have the same improvements. In fact one way we could start I think voki's could be adapted to Indigenous needs would be to have an interface that resembled an aboriginal child available and as it is possible to record voices onto the voki it would be easy to have a persona with an aboriginal dialect to do the voice for a few to use in the classrooms. Far to often Indigenous students see no one who looks like them in their school books and now they are facing the same issue with the apps on their pcs. As educators we should be looking to use avatars that represent all our students.

Wouldn't it be terrific to use these voki's on a whiteboard and have them actually animate the conversation. I did a little research to see what other things we could do with voki's in our classroom and have included some of them for you.

Use Voki's in the classroom!


Students can create avatars in their image and record a message about themselves. They can exchange these avatars with e-pals anywhere in the world. Students can generate questions to ask their avatar e-pals. English as a Second Language students can use the speaking avatars to practice and listen to their speech. They may use the computerised voice first then record their own voice when they feel more comfortable. Writing, reading and pronunciation are all practiced. Students can create an avatar that resembles a character from a story, give it speech from the story or a creative point of view from the character on an event.

Helpful web sites:

Picardo J. Get the kids talking - How using Voki might help. Box of Tricks.

Classroom 2.0

Reference:
Prenky, M. (2005) "Engage me or enrage me," What today's learners demand. [Electronic Resource] Retrieved December 15th, 2009 from
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm05