Voki makes it easy for educators to incorporate technology into lesson plans and assignments (and it’s advertisement free!).

A couple weeks ago in the post “3 Quick Lesson Plan Ideas That Utilize Technology”, we explored some ways in which animation web sites could be used in the classroom. These types of tools were new to me and struck me, and readers who commented, as a great way to engage students in preparing assignments, reports, or projects.

I had a lot of fun getting hands-on and trying out GoAnimate (as illustrated in this video blog post), and I’ve been looking forward to exploring Voki, the other site suggested by guest writer Rebecca Garland in that post.

This weekend I spent some time with Voki, and had fun learning about Voki’s resources for educators, and creating and using my own Avatar. In the video below, I show how easy it was to create a customized speaking avatar using Voki. In the rest of the post, I discuss some of Voki’s resources for educators.

The folks at Voki are clearly focused on education, and have created a special “Voki for Education” web site section. Two of the main resources provided for educators are a Lesson Plans database and a Teacher’s Corner forum.

Voki’s Lesson Plans Database
Voki’s database of lesson plans is searchable by grade level and subject area. Objectives, Materials, and Activities for each lesson are clearly laid out, and the lesson plans can all be rated. Following are a few examples of some of their top rated Lesson Plans:

• Community History (Grade Level: 7th Grade):  In this lesson, students analyze the development of a community, use interactive media, and learn interview skills.
• Delivery (Grade Level: Higher Ed):  Students learn about how to identify and read nonverbal communication, and how body language can be perceived by an audience.
• Hygiene (Grade Level: 1st Grade): Using Smartboard and Voki, students learn about good oral hygiene, why brushing your teeth is important, and which foods are bad for the teeth, while developing better reading comprehension.

The Teacher’s Corner
The forum provides 5 discussion areas: Q&A, Ideas & Feature Requests, a “Newbie’s Corner”, Voki in the Classroom, and a section for Voki Partner Sites. The forum includes quick links to access “Recent Topics”, “Hottest Topics”, and a Search function. Some of the Hot Topics that looked particularly interesting to me were threads focused on embedding your Voki creations in other apps, like PowerPoint 2010, Blackboard, and Blogger.

Wrap Up
I think Voki is pretty cool, and I bet you probably will too. I can’t believe I haven’t come across more information and discussion about using animation tools in course work before. Voki and GoAnimator are just two of many of these types of tools available online, for free. While Voki is geared towards the creation of simple speaking avatars, GoAnimator lets you create little animated movies. Another example is MakeBeliefsComix, which bills itself as an “Online Educational Comix Generator for Kids of All Ages” (thank you to Ryan Moulden for mentioning this in a comment on the “3 Quick Lesson Plan Ideas …” post).

The one primary shortcoming of Voki that occurs to me is the 1 minute limit to what can be recorded for a given avatar. Multiple avatars can be created, but I saw no obvious way to simply copy an avatar so you could then record more speech to create a new “scene” for it. Additionally, there did not seem to be any apparent help utility (beyond an FAQ section). If I just missed this, and someone knows how to find help or request help in Voki, kindly comment and point it out.

I’d love to hear more about these kinds of apps and how readers are using them in the classroom. If you’ve used these or other animations applications, or if you have some questions, please don’t hesitate to comment below and share your observations or thoughts.

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3 Quick Lesson Plan Ideas That Utilize Technology

Letting students use technology to create presentations, reports, journals, etc., can be an easy way to introduce technology in a lesson plan or project.

Guest Post by Rebecca Garland

If you’ve been teaching longer than a few years, you already know that it can be tricky to be a “perfect” teacher all the time. While we might play the part of perfect when it comes times for evaluations and such, most of the time we tend to fall back on what we know – which usually isn’t the latest and greatest technology.

Unfortunately the lack of planning time and huge amounts of expectations in the classroom create a challenge when it comes time to work in some technology-based lessons. In many cases, there just isn’t time to learn about the sites or figure out how to use them – no matter how great they looked in the thirty minute meeting you had with the technology specialist last week.

Rather than just blowing off improving technology in the classroom, you should look for ways to use it more simply. The key to this is to let the students create with technology – it’s far less time-consuming for the teacher than having to create a lot of content yourself. Here are a few quick lessons that have a great technology tie-in that shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to plan or organize.

GoAnimate.com – It’s an animation website (wait, don’t panic!) that your students can use to create their own short movies. All you have to do is send students to the website on the library or computer lab computers. Have them set up their own free accounts and explain that there are very limited choices for free accounts when it comes to customization of characters, but they are creative enough to work around that.

Once they are signed in, they should create an animation in one of the available “worlds” to perhaps summarize a book or short story, deliver a speech they have written, teach a lesson on a particular topic or introduce themselves or their ideas to the class. It’s a great way to present student work without having to force students to the front of the room.

Voki.com – Another great, simple website that students can jump right into. Voki creates talking, somewhat animated avatars. Have students write poetry or speeches and then create a Voki to actually read the message aloud. Or make a final deliverable for a formal paper a bit more interesting by having a Voki that the student has created read it aloud to you.

Both Voki and GoAnimate are “cutesy”, but often letting students play with a website gets them much more engaged in what you’re asking them to do. Rather than just the typical ‘write a summary of the article’, tell students to create a Voki to describe it instead. It uses the same principle of summarizing and picking out main points, but it also lets students dabble in the sorts of things that make learning ‘fun’ to the digital mind.

Blogger.com – If your students have access to Blogger, have them use the blogs instead of a journal to outline ideas or create products for your assignments. Since the blogs are visible to the world, you might assign pen names (that you would know, of course) if your students are underage – and be sure to get permission ahead of time. Stress to students that having published work means it must be mindful of the audience and cautious at the same time.

Let the students write journal entries, address prompts you’ve set up, or summarize chapters of the text or novel you’re working on in class. One idea that is a bit more involved and “out of the box” is to have students set up the blog as if they are the main character in a novel or perhaps even a scientific element or historical figure. They must stay “in character” throughout the blog posts and post a minimum number of times exploring concepts, ideas and plot points through their posts. You would need only to go to their posts to view the blogs when the assignment is finished to create a grade. You could even have fun leaving comments for your students to have them respond with deeper thoughts on the posts – much like a more traditional reading response journal.

[Click here to open a brief video tutorial showing how easy it is to get started blogging with Blogger.]

 
Have you used these, or similar tools, to create lesson plans that incorporate technology? Do you have any experiences to share that can help others? Please comment and share your insights, ideas, or questions! Thanks - KW

Rebecca Garland is a freelance education writer specializing in creating materials to inform, educate and entertain readers. She represents a Minneapolis technical school online as well as creating materials other secondary teachers might be able to use in the classroom to improve student engagement and foster deeper learning.

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This free, easy app for creating scrolling timeline-style content is a fun way for students or teachers to create presentations.

With Vuvox you can easily create scrolling presentations that include pictures, text, video, and music. I’d come across it some time ago, and thought it would be a lot of fun for students or teachers to use to create reports or presentation materials.

I decided I’d take it for a spin by using it to create a video for a song I recorded with some help from my family (a version of the old folk/country classic, “The Streets of Laredo”). I was able to do so, with one limitation I had to overcome. Overall I enjoyed the process, and think Vuvox is a wonderful tool. The final product is presented below.

NOTE: The issue I had was overcome by capturing the playback with Camtasia and editing it to create a final product that consistently synched the music and the visuals. This was necessary because I was trying to accomplish something that was really beyond the intended capabilities of Vuvox. The tool is excellent for creating scrolling visual presentations and generally works well with background music, it’s just not intended to be used for tightly synchronized playback of music and video at the same time.

Here is the original Vuvox presentation, which is the same basic thing (but the song easily ends up being out of synch with the visuals if you mouse over it or drag the scroll control around – maybe there’s a way to lock the song to the playback, but if there was, it wasn’t evident to me). As you can see, Vuvox presentations can be embedded in a web page, but they can also be delivered via a URL.

I’m a big fan of Vuvox, and I think it is a great example of the way Web 2.0 tools can be engaging and fun and can enable students to have a blast while learning and creating. To create presentations, you simply upload files and drag and drop them in to the presentation area. Images are easy to move around, resize, rotate, etc. Text is added or edited using a simple tool. 

Click here to explore various Vuvox presentations that are currently being featured on the site. I encourage you to stop by and check Vuvox out today!  

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There are so many different tools and technologies available on the internet today, and so many associated terms and concepts. As I think about topics to focus on here in the coming months, I want to make sure we’re touching on the most important ones. What are the most important internet technologies for educators to be aware of, and informed about?

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I’m sure many people would probably come up with a slightly different list, but based on my observations and experiences, and feedback from faculty at my institution, I have selected the following technologies. I do not mean to imply that every educator should be expected to use all of these technologies in the classroom, but rather that every educator should understand what these are, the potential they have in the classroom, and how their students may already be using them. 

1. Video and Podcasting - One of the most widely adopted internet technologies for use in instructional settings is video streaming. Between YouTube, TeacherTube, EduTube, and many other video hosting sites, there are an abundance of lectures, how-to videos, and supporting materials available in the form of web based video. Podcasting has also been used to provide similar offerings of audio materials through popular sites like iTunes. [Click here to learn more about video hosting for education, or here to learn more about podcasting for education.]

2. Presentation Tools - This category is vast and rich. There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of tools on the Internet that can be used to create and share presentations, from simple Powerpoint slide players like Slideshare to multimedia timeline tools like Vuvox and OneTrueMedia. These tools can be used to support classroom teaching or distance learning, or for student reports and presentations.

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3. Collaboration & Brainstorming Tools - This is another wide ranging category, including thought-organizing tools like mindmap and bubbl.us, and collaborative tools like web based interactive whiteboards and Google Documents. Additionally, some of the other tools in this list, such as wikis and virtual worlds, also serve as collaboration tools.

4. Blogs & Blogging – Bloggers and many other regular Internet users are well aware of blogs and blogging, but there are many other professionals who really are not frequenters of the “blogosphere”. In addition to a basic familiarity with this technology, educators should be aware of sites like Blogger and WordPress, where users can quickly and easily create their own blogs for free.

5. Wikis – The use of Wikis in educational settings is growing every day. Sites like Wetpaint and others allow users to create free wiki web sites and are a great way to get started with using wikis for educational applications. [Click here to learn more about the use of Wikis in education].

6. Social Networking – All educators should have a basic understanding of sites like Facebook and MySpace and how they are used. This doesn’t mean they need accounts on these sites (and many educators would recommend against using these sites to communicate with their students), but they should understand what they are and how they are being used. Educators should also be aware of the professional social networking site LinkedIn.

7. IM – A large percentage of students use IM regularly, via Aim, IM aggregator site Meebo (Meebo allows users to combine messaging from Aim, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, and other sites), or other tools. It behooves educators to be aware of this, and I have even come across various articles about using IM within the classroom setting (such as this one from Educause).

8. Twitter – This listing is really focused on technologies, not specific applications, but this application is currently just too popular to ignore. You should at least understand what it is and the fundamentals of how it is used. [Click here for some insight into how Twitter can be used in education.]

9. Virtual Worlds – This technology has received a lot of press, with SecondLife being the clear leader thus far in this application area. In my experience, the use of SecondLife has been somewhat constrained by high bandwidth and processing power requirements, but this also means that there is still considerable room for increased adoption of the application as systems continue to become more powerful and higher speed bandwidth more prevalant. Active Worlds is one of a number of competitive technologies, and provides a “universe” dedicated to education that has been popular with educators.

10. RSS Feeds - RSS allows users to create their own “push” data streams (that is, define data flows you want coming to you automatically, rather than having to go and “pull” the information with a Google search or other browsing effort). RSS feeds enable you to take advantage of streams of published content that will be sitting in your In Box, or in an RSS reader, when you want them. There are RSS feeds available for many topics and many web sites.

While many readers may have their own interpretation of which technologies are essential for educators to be aware of, I think this is a great list to get started with. Of course, this list will require updating over time, as technologies change, and as educator’s uses of these technologies evolve. As always, reader input is welcomed. What do you think? Is this a good top 10? Would you like to see some other technologies listed here? Feel free to comment and offer your insights, please. Thanks!

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Vuvox (vuvox.com): Vuvox allows for the easy creation of interactive timeline-style presentations from photos, video and music. This is such a great, and straightforward way to tell a story – create a timeline of pictures, and add some music or other audio. In addition to being a great way to support a lecture on a given topic, it can also be wonderful tool for students to supplement a presentation, create an artisitic ‘statement’, or perhaps even replace a traditional paper report (sources could even be cited in the presentation!).

Here is an example of a Vuvox timeline presentation, focused on preparations for President Obama’s inauguration in Washington, featured on 2/15/09 in Vuvox’s “Explore” section (this presentation is composed primarily of a series of pictures over a sound track, but keep in mind that you can utilize many types of visual content to Vuvox). It should be noted that Vuvox currently has three distinct areas of functionality, ”Collage” (used to quickly produce interactive panoramas), ”Studio” (for building a personalized media presentation, which can be placed in a Collage), and “Express” (for building presentations with dynamic content from RSS feeds and online albums).

One True Media (onetruemedia.com):  This is one of many tools/sites that lets you quickly and easily combine text, pictures, video, and audio into a movie format. The educational applications are probably similar to Vuvox, but with the result being in movie format instead of a timeline flow. Here is an example of a One True Media video.

Slideshare (slideshare.net): Often cited as a sort of “Powerpoint for the Internet”, Slideshare lets users easily create online slide shows. Obviously, these presentations can be used similarly to how Powerpoint Presentations can be used, with the significant difference that they can be viewed online, commented on, and imbedded in (or linked to from) other Internet applications, taking them to a whole new level. The ability to allow others to comment on them certainly adds to the educational possibilities, as a group of students can be asked to view a slideshow, and submit commentary. Here is an example Slideshare presentation.

For an overview of a wide variety of web resources for digital story telling, check out this page from Alan Levine’s wonderful “50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story” site: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools.

Hopefully this introduction to these fascinating tools has captured your interest – now go explore!