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Voki

Create a speaking avatar and add your voice

Voki is a wonderful little tool that allows you to make your own avatar that speaks your messages. It appeals to me for these reasons:

  • it’s free
  • it’s incredibly easy to use – so intuitive – absolutely no training or reading is necessary
  • it’s great fun
  • my students really like it
  • it has many cool uses
  • you can embed it in your blog or website or e-mail it to someone

Here’s one of my Voki avatars:

I typed my message and selected the voice and accent from the drop-down menus. You sometimes have to type phonetically – For the avatar to pronounce ‘Voki’, I had to type ‘vocky’.

I usually try and choose the hair, face shape, clothing options that most resemble me. I can’t seem to find an option for the few bits of hair I have on the sides of my bald pate – guess they might come in the next version spacer

Cool voice options:

  • you can type what you want the avatar to say, as I did above (the text-to-speech is pretty good)
  • you can record your own message that your avatar will speak and lip-sync to
  • you can send a phone message to Voki that your avatar will use
  • you can browse an upload an MP3 file from your computer

All very easy. All very cool and fun. I also like moving the cursor around the screen and watching my avatar’s eyes follow it – small things like that amuse me.

Classroom uses

1. Setting up

a. Groundwork
Explore with your students the concept of avatars. Should they look like yourself or should you let your creative juices take over? Introduce the James Cameron movie into the discussion. You could do one of my Listen A Minute.com lesson on avatars.

b. Purpose
Discuss with your students what they could use their avatar(s) for. You could create a reading exercise and write a short piece on your thoughts on and uses of avatars. This could be a model for students’ writing.

2. The Voki website and creating an avatar

a. Exploit the web page
Quite often we send our students to websites and expect them to know all of the vocabulary. There’s a lot we could do to make use of the language on a page for learning purposes. The Voki homepage is a great source of “modern” and “techy” vocab, which I guess is fairly high-frequency (?) among younger people.

Examples on the Voki homepage: customize, social networks, participate, personalize, advertising, profile, innovative, creativity, groundbreaking, upload, privacy policy, terms of service

Encourage students to explore on their own by clicking on the links that show the video or go to the forum… This can give lower level learners the confidence to explore more on the Net.

b. Describing people
Students can choose from quite an array of options for their avatar. This gives the teacher a lot of very useful vocabulary to work with. It has all the facial features, hairstyles, skin colours, uniforms and even a whole section of bling (that’s ‘accessories’ for those my age and older).

c. Nationalities
Another useful opportunity for vocabulary practice. A drop-down menu provides you with the accent for your Voki – you can choose from Basque to Czech to Galician to Polish to Turkish and lots more in between (including US and UK English).

3. The avatar

a. Character development
Once students have their avatar, they write their own profile for it and develop its character. Students can write questions to each other’s avatars or comment on them.

b. Question the avatars
Students write questions for each other’s avatars.

c. Comparisons
Students write comparisons between themselves and their avatar.

d. Grammar practice
Students write about their avatar. The writing fits the grammar being taught by the teacher (what the avatar did yesterday, what it’s going to do in the future, likes and dislikes…).

e. Family and friends
Students create a family and friends for their avatar. These can be additional Vokis or those they create for a written activity.

4. Avatar communication

a. Ice-breaker
Use the avatar to introduce yourself to your students or for students to introduce themselves to others.

b. E-mail
Get students to record a Voki and send the message to you. It could accompany homework with a short message about their work, a request, an apology for being late…

c. Class wiki / website
Students record Vokis to welcome visitors to their blog / wiki / website.

d. Projects
i. Make an online “class wall” of Vokis – all students introduce themselves.
ii. Next time you do a class project, get students to present it all with Vokis.
iii. Pass the Voki. The teacher records a Voki message and e-mails it to the first student. He or she records what he/she hears and sends it to student 2. Repeat the process until the final student Vokis the teacher. The class see if the final Voki is the same as the first.
iv. Voki soap opera – The class creates a soap opera based on Vokis.

Resources

40 (and counting) more links to cool stuff on Voki

Plus…

Please tell us how you use Voki by posting a comment. Thank you spacer

Tags: avatar, pronunciation, speaking, text-to-speech, Voki, web 2.0

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 9:43 am and is filed under Voki. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

17 Responses to “Voki”

  1. spacer Shelly Terrell says:
    May 21, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    These are great ideas for using Voki! I like your avatar but he doesn’t look like you. My avatar doesn’t look like me either! LOL!

  2. spacer Sean says:
    May 22, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Damn – I spent hours fine-tuning those eyebrows and lips spacer

  3. spacer Marisa Pavan says:
    May 23, 2010 at 10:10 pm

    These are great ideas and very creative too. I got enthusiastic about Voki and had one ready to share with my students but couldn’t embed it into my classroom blog (wordpress) no matter how hard I tried. I copy what voki Website told me to copy and paste it but the avatar never appeared.
    Marisa

  4. spacer eslteachertim says:
    May 24, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    Hi Sean,
    I am trying to use VOKI on my social network coffeeshopenglish.ning.com... but so far no takers.
    I think, without direct instruction, it may be a little too hard for some students to get a grip with the language as you say.
    I like the idea of putting them on your blog page tho… maybe my students would be up for that. In fact, I’m going to do that right now!
    Cheers for the inspiration.
    Tim

  5. spacer Julie Hawkins says:
    May 24, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    Thanks, Sean for all your tips. I’ve used avatars on my blog and they are lots of fun. I’m an ESL teacher in Australia and I upload photos, share experiences and link my students to other useful sites using a blog. The avatar can read their story too, although only for 60 secs! cheers JH spacer

  6. spacer Julie Hawkins says:
    May 24, 2010 at 5:45 pm

    Anyone, wanting to have a look at my blog can go to:www.balga2.blogspot.com

  7. spacer Colin West says:
    May 29, 2010 at 5:03 am

    Thanks, Sean for all your tips. I’ve used avatars on my blog and they are lots of fun. I’m an ESL teacher in Australia and I upload photos, share experiences and link my students to other useful sites using a blog. The avatar can read their story too, although only for 60 secs! cheers JH
    +1

  8. spacer Chris Cattaneo says:
    June 8, 2010 at 9:09 am

    Dear Sean,

    Doesn’t this look brilliant fun!?

    What’s most interesting for all teachers is your list of ideas on what to do with Voki.

    Your ideas and creativity are well explained and clear – essential at this time of the year when teachers are getting tired. I particularly like how you suggest so much ‘production’ around the Voki avatars in class – describing, comparing, questioning…. Lots of laughter and fun too! PRECIOUS!

    Thanks for all your work Sean.
    Chris

    (PS I particularly find the ‘non-human’ avatars most fun !)

  9. spacer Sean says:
    June 8, 2010 at 6:59 pm

    Thank you Chris for your comments – I really appreciate them.

  10. spacer Lily says:
    August 9, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Hi, I agree with your comments on Voki. I love using it – it is easy/intuitive to use. Your ideas for using Voki are great. Will use some of your ideas! Thanks for sharing Sean. Cheers ^_^

  11. spacer Terry says:
    August 11, 2010 at 4:18 am

    Hi Sean,

    I’m quickly falling in love with the Voki idea. I am an ESL teacher in Toronto, Canada. My students tried leaving a Voki message on my blog for the first time today. I especially like the fact that they are now paying more attention to their spelling and grammar in order to produce intelligible speech.

    I also had problems embedding in my blog but my neighbor helped me out. Only part of the code actually needs to be linked.

    Thanks for all your great contributions!

    Terry

  12. spacer talar says:
    September 23, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    Thanks for the great ideas you always share with us!!

  13. spacer Sean says:
    September 24, 2010 at 11:10 am

    Thank you talar spacer

  14. spacer Ann says:
    November 19, 2010 at 6:43 pm

    This site has caused lots excitement. Thanks to those who offered ideas on how to use the avatars in the classroom. It’s much more than just a lot of fun. But I wish I could upload my own photo and use my face for the speaking avatar. Does anyone know of a free site that would allow me to do that? Thanks.

  15. spacer alicia says:
    January 10, 2011 at 5:06 am

    This is awesome information SEan!!!!!! Thank you very much. I am interesting in knowing how to do the “class wall” or family of vokis, is it possible for you to expand more on that?
    My problem now is how to move the vokis for everybody to see. I would like to do it in google docs (presentations) but I have not been successful spacer Hope you can help!!!!!
    Thanks

    Alicia Camarillo-Cremer (Spanish teacher)

  16. spacer Roger Assis says:
    February 9, 2011 at 4:41 am

    Precious Sean,
    I am an EFL teacher in Brazil, and I would like to thank you for all the tips.
    They will booster my teaching.
    Keep on inspiring.
    Take care.
    Roger

  17. spacer deneme says:
    March 21, 2011 at 9:39 am

    Thanks for sharing. I like and share my face. I want see more image pls.

    Good site, thanks again.

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