A vision for your voice with Voki
Sometimes, you just need to interject a little bit of fun. Voki is a website that lets you create an animated avatar that you can customize and supply your own voice to. Yes, they’re a little wacky, but who says education can’t be fun?
There are several ways you can get your voice recorded. You can use a microphone and record it directly, you can upload an audio file to their server, you can type out a message and have a digitized voice read it, or you could even do it by phone. There are two options for phone recording, you call them or they call you. I have to admit, I got a kick out of having the service call up my cell phone and say "Hi! Leave your Voki message at the beep!"
It seemed that there was a limit of two or three minutes when doing it via phone. I do wonder whether that limit is increased if you upload your own audio. Be nice to be able to use it to post a full podcast. I’ll have to try that later.
Until then, this could be a fun way to animate class announcements, recaps from the end of the school day, reminders for students, and so on. What else could it be used for?
AC_Voki_Embed(300,400, ‘abcde4877df0d2ef1f609e6fc3794133′, 2179, 1, ”, 0);
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Comments
Teryl Magee - TN DEN LC, Chair
Fun! Don’t know how I could use it in class yet. Maybe I’ll use it for podcasts once I get my class webpage up and going (next years project).
Larry Ferlazzo
Steve,
Coincidentally, I, too, posted today about Voki. Specifically, I wrote how to use it, and similar online applications, in teaching English Language Learners:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/05/15/make-a-virtual-you/
Elaine Plybon - Texas LC
Can this be imported into MovieMaker? I’m thinking it could be incorporated into an educational video. Better to look at one of these than to just hear a narrator’s voice.
Elaine Plybon - Texas LC
I just thought of another use — embedding Voki avatars in Google Earth trips, like a virtual tour guide!
M. Thornburgh
I am trying out VOKI and it is taking forever to upload the audio. Is anyone else having this problem? I tried today at school and thought the problem might be a firewall, but it isn’t working at home either. If I can’t get this to work, I will try the phone. I know my kids would get a kick out of a digital Monday morning greeting.
Maryann Molishus
I took a bit of time to upload sound, maybe a few minutes. At first, I thought it wasn’t going to go through, but then it did. I showed my students “me as a flower” and they were thoroughly amused. I think this would be great for my second graders who really need practice with their speaking skills. This could lessen the anxiety or perhaps encourage children to take a risk, knowing that it would be an animal or character speaking–they might be willing to be more animated with their speech.