http://www.voki.com/
My Voki
Voki’s are
creative “Speaking” Avatars. They can be used as interactive lessons,
introducing new technology, enhancing language skills, for homework, and projects
galore. Students can create their own Avatars, using their own voices and these
Voki’s can be posted to any website, blog, or profile.
Voki’s
are engaging to the students and allows them to create an avatar for presenting
information to the world in a safe manner.
Voki’s
are very easy to use and control. Students need little instruction to use the
tools in building their avatars. As an educator, I will be able to easily
add lessons and review what the students create before posting.
Another
tool that Voki has is called Voki classroom. It easily adds technology to every
unit of study and it is quite affordable.
Prezi is an
online storytelling tool for presenting creative ideas on a virtual canvas. It
can be used for group projects or interactive classroom sessions. There is an
importing tool for power point presentations. Prezi can be accessed from
anywhere. It is the perfect tool to inspire creativity in students.
Designing tools
that bring out students creativity can be a challenge. That’s why I am thankful
for tools like Prezi and Voki. They fit into the TPCK model especially easy.
The affordances of this technology bring access to easy to use tools to infer
better collaboration with students at home and around the globe. English,
History, Art, Drama, Music teachers to name a few may utilize this technology
for essays, lectures, plays, musicals, and etc. It would be nice to see how the
pedagogical aspect is fortuitous. As a PE Teacher I could use these tools to
have my students research famous coaches in the NFL and have them design Prezi’s
with their favorite sayings, who they coached for, and have them show why they were so successful in
the teams they led to such success. Then using these tools brings about a NEW
creativity aspect. I have learned that creativity is novel, effective, and
whole when inserted properly.
Other ways
these tools may be utilized would be in setting up introductions at the
beginning of a new school year. Each student would set up their own Voki that
would consist of introducing themselves to the class. I would have them describe
their name, grade, and to name one thing that no one knows about them that they
will share. This could all be done in a sixty second delivery.
Finally,
creative tools turn dependent students into independent ones. Having them
discover that they can take charge of their own growth in education, develop
critical thinking logic that they never realized they could accomplish, and
seeing how Bloom’s taxonomy is real in their lives through their creativity,
evaluation techniques, and that they can analyze, apply, understand, and
remember. This is ultimately when I will feel successful as a designer of
instruction.
