My About Me Voki

This week we learned a little bit more about each other. We presented our "About Me" projects using the technology we chose. For my project I chose Voki, which is a website that you can create your own animations of yourself or someone else. You can choose an animated person, or animal to represent who you are trying to create. After you choose the type of figure you want, you get to choose all the features and make it really come to life. You can make the hair color lighter or darker, the eyes any color you want, and even change the size and shape of the facial features. Once you complete that you choose an outfit. There are different categories such as casual, sporty, and dressy. You can even choose the type of jewelry you want on your animated character, which I thought was very unique. After you completely dress your person you pick a background which ranges from indoors, outdoors, holidays, sports events, and even specific places in the world. I liked this the most because it adds character and personality to your animated character. Finally to make your Voki talk, you can either record yourself or type out what you want to say and then pick the type of voice you would like to use. For my Voki I chose to type out what I wanted her to say because I personally do not like the way I sound, so having someone else speak for me was the best option. A problem I had with website was that you only had a limited number of characters to choose from. In order to get other options you had to either be a teacher or an administrator, which was a problem for me. I had my Voki designed and ready to publish when they told me I couldn't save it because I was using features that were not compatible with the version I was using. So I had to start all over, and pick a character that was an anime because it worked with my version. Overall, I liked using this website and I think it would be very useful in classrooms especially with young children!! As a teacher you can create activities where students have to make an animated version of an astronaut or a famous scientist you are teaching about. Students would enjoy it because it's interactive and they can put their own spin on the characters.

One of the websites that my classmates used that I really enjoyed was WordArt. Students can use words to describe themselves and make them into any shape they want that represents the idea they are working with. I thought it was an interesting way to incorporate language arts and whatever topic you are teaching (science, social studies, or math).