PE4 Voki

Voki.com - Becoming An Expert - Part 1 


Multiplying by three is fun with the Voki Character Three. 

I have decided to use Voki.com for my Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenarios (RILS) assignment.  You can create talking avatars with your own voice or you can use the text to talk feature.  I think Voki will be relevant to my students because it is fun to use and can create excitement.   My students have the opportunity to create avatars while using other programs at school, however, those avatars do not talk.  I introduced my students to Voki today.  I also showed them my first creation using Voki.  They are already excited about working with Voki.  Many questions came up after I told them a little about the project that they will be doing.  The first question was: "Do they have a monkey one?"  I loved it!  Already so much interest and they haven't even begun to create their own Voki.

When you click on the tutorials it will take you to YouTube videos that users have made that show you how to use Voki.  The first video that came up was not very good but YouTube suggested a lot of other videos that were of better quality.  Here is a link to one of the best tutorials that I saw on YouTube. 

The video might be a good place to start to give students an idea of how to use Voki.  Since it is the beginning of the year, I am not sure if all my students are computer savvy.  I think that it may be helpful to create a step by step tutorial for my students to use when they make their own Voki.  Screenshots may be the best way to do this.  Below is an example of what I may use.  I would take a few more screen shots to create a simple start to finish step by step guide that I could print for the students to use as they go.

Step 1: Customize your Avatar by choosing a character, clothing, and features.  You may also change features like skin, eye and lip color by choosing the tab called "Color" in the lower left corner.  You can select the other tab that says "Tweak."  This will allow you to change the size of the features.  Click on the dice to select a random avatar.

Overall Voki is very easy to use and it seems that there are very few problems with it.  As I was creating my second project, I found some things that may create issues for the students.  If a student chooses a feature, like glasses, there is no "Undo button" to go back to remove that feature.  The classes will stay.  There are some features that include a "blank" button that will remove the feature but it doesn't appear on all features.  Another button that may cause a problem is the Cancel button.  Students may try to use that to Undo their mistake.  The Cancel button will actually cancel your new creation and all changes you made will be lost.  I also had a problem with the publishing feature.  I could copy and paste a link but the post to blog feature failed every time I tried it.

I have been using the free version of Voki.  They also offer Voki Classroom for a membership fee.  The membership fee is reasonable.  If the RILS project proves to be a success, I will purchase a membership.  There are more features on the Classroom version.  It also allows you to create student accounts.  This would be helpful because students could log in by using their own username and password and begin working without my help.

Watch for my next Voki presentation in my next blog.