Week 12: Creating Avatars

You Can Create Avatars.  Yes you can! Gizmoz: With Gizmoz you can put your own photo into a scene or you can pick from famous or fanciful characters.  Using the create a clip tool, you can record your message or type in the text to speech tool.  I used the text to speech on this one because I was unable to record at school. Week 12: Web 2.0 Wednesday Challenge: Creating Avatars This week's challenge is too much fun.  You might want to play with this one over your Thanksgiving Break.  Creating Avatars is a lot of fun and it can be used in teaching and on blogs, wikis and websites in a variety of ways.   There are lots of different Web 2.0 Sites for creating Avatars.  Some create a fanciful image of yourself, a famous person or an animal.  Some even talk and move.  Avatars can be used in a variety of ways.  All of the sites are fun to use.  Some work better than others from school ;) Check out a few and pick which one works best for you To secure a student's identity, have them create an Avatar to represent themselves online. Avatars can make great story starters.  An Avatar can take on characteristics of the person naming them.  Note the camera and the Birkenstocks on the M&M Avatar.  Students could create and then write about their character.  Some sites let you animate a person or a thing.  These are great for creating short biographies and reports.  Students could take a photo of George Washington and have the character tell about his life.  With Blabberize students can make anything talk so they could have a raindrop tell about the water cycle.  With Gizmoz and Vokis students can share their conversational language skills in a different language.  Check out Ms. Meissner's French Blog Avatars. Teachers can use talking Avatars to introduce a lesson, or to ask questions on a blog or Wiki.  For fun, you can create a talking avatar to send as a holiday greeting. Challenge:  Use one of the many Avatar tools to create an Avatar.  To be enterered into the drawing, be sure to e-mail me a copy of your Avatar to t56linc@gmail.com.  Bonus points for sharing how you might use this in class.  Even more bonus points if you can post or embed your avatar on your website, wiki or blog. We will be drawing for a winner on December 3. Voki:  With Voki you can have fun creating your own character.  It can be an animal, a life like person or something more fanciful.  You can add a voice by recording, phone, text to speech or uploading a MP3 file.  Again, I had trouble recording my voice at school.  The phone works great.  With text to speech you can choose lots of different fun voices and special effects.  I have also recorded using a free sound mixing software called Audacity.  Check out these great Vokis created in Catherine Meisners French 3 class. Blabberize: Blabberize has great potential because you can insert photos or paintings of famous people or animate an inanimate object.  This is great for doing biographies or reports on a concept, or period in history.  Blabberize is a bit finnicky.  You can record your voice, phone in your message or upload a recorded mp3 file. BeFunky:  No animation here, but this site lets you cartoonize your photos.  This is a picture of my giant mutt falling off the couch while sleeping.  You can take your photo and create a line sketch, color it in if you'd like and even distort it for fun. Great for creating your likeness, but a little funkier. BuildYourWildself.com : This is a fun site especially for young children from New York Zoos and Aquarium.  You pick out facial features, clothes, back groun and then add animal features.  Imagine the great stories that could be created with these characters. Become An M&M: Just silly and fun.  Would be great for creating a safe online identity.  Fun also for a writing activity. You can choose colors, eyes, hair, shoes and accessories. Simpsonizeme: Now this is the silliest of all.  With Simpsonize Me, you upload your picture and then choose features and backgrounds to create you only Simpsonized.  Here is another wiki from Paul Bogush with some other great Avatar Sites