Voki Project and Reflection

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.