Students in French 3 Honors went to www.voki.com and created an avatar during one class period. They next provided a description of what they did over the weekend. The goal of the activity was to find a fun way to speak French, as well as review the past tense.
Site used: www.voki.com
The basic program is free if you create an account; you get more options if you pay for a classroom site.
Sample: http://www.voki.com/php/viewmessage/?chsm=57915c6bb9c45286c51a84a8002a0743&mId=1007386
Reflection:
Students had great fun creating their own avatar. There's quite a collection of details to choose from: character, color hair/eyes/skin, accessories, background, etc.
There were a number of serious problems, however:
The site claims that students can record their own voice, as well as type a message and choose a voice to speak for them. Unfortunately, neither I nor the students were able to record their own voice. Students were quite happy to avoid speaking themselves, but I was very disappointed because that was one of my main goals of the activity.
The other problem is that although the site claims that students can record for up to a minute, the record portion that I was able to listen to was actually much shorter, probably closer to a minute.
I may use this site again with the same class and have students reuse the same avatar and just change the text.
Did you watch each student's avatar?
ReplyDeleteI will try this. Sounds great!
ReplyDeleteRegina
Kathy, I'm confused...did it actually give you a minute or less than a minute?! Did it claim to give you 1 minute or more???
ReplyDelete