How I use Voki to enrich teaching and learning

Below is my interview from the Voki blog explaining how I use this tool.

Goal

My goal with using Voki is to give every student a voice and a face in a fun and engaging way even if they only have access to a phone.

How I use Voki

Voki is a great tool that allows the 21st century student to capture, publish, celebrate and converse about any topic or subject.  I love helping innovative educators use Voki.  Here are some of the things they are doing.

• Students can use Voki in the revision process of their writing by recording a Voki to make sure it sounds right. If it doesn’t, simply revise and re-record.
• During publishing parties some students are uncomfortable reading their work. Thanks to Voki they can present their work without embarrassment.
• English and Foreign language Learners can use Voki by recording themselves saying dialogue or reading a passage.  Listening to the Voki enables them to hear how they sound and work on fluency.

Some of my favorite things about Voki:

• It enables students who might not be proficient at writing to tell their story or share their message.
• It enables students to publish to an authentic audience in a format where others can comment and keep the conversation going.
• It gives a voice to a student who might not feel comfortable speaking publicly.

What would I add to the Voki product?
The ability to add your own Avatar either via your photo or drawing.

My favorite Voki trick
Set up pages at the end of units of study where students can share one great thing they learned. This creates a page of our learning which serves as a great reflective tool.  I also suggest inviting parents, family members and others in the school to community to leave Voki comments for students.

See how other educators use Voki here.

Educators connect with students & parents using Voki animated avatar

With Voki (www.Voki.com) you can share a message using an animated avatar that talks. It is created using a student’s own voice recorded right from any phone. You can design the avatar’s appearance, add voice, and can get an embed code to pop it into any web2.0 compatible site (Wikis, Blogs, Facebook, Websites) or even powerpoint. The avatar moves and speaks based on what the caller says.

Not only does Voki provide a fun way to share information with parents but you can also capture anyone’s message with a cell phone. This means once you set up the Voki up on any computer you can hand phone to a student, teacher, principal or yourself to capture a powerful words and ideas to share.

Who's doing this?

1. Greg Miller - Primary school principal Since Vokis are easily embeddable school staff often use Voki to record introduction messages for their school websites. For example, special education teacher Kim Gill embedded a Voki to welcome students and parents to their home page (http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/gillk). Primary school Principal Greg Miller recorded a personalized welcome message and embedded onto the school website.

3 Ideas for Using Voki in Education

Get a Voki now!

Give Students a Voice (and Face) with Voki

Voki is a terrific way to enable your students to share a message using an animated avatar that talks created using their own voice recorded right from their phone. Students design their avatar’s appearance, add their voice, and can pop it into any web2.0 compatible site (Wikis, Blogs, Facebook, Websites). The avatar moves and speaks based on what you say.

Ideas for Using Voki with Students

1) The review/proofing stage of the writing process can be a drag and is quite often skipped over. The Voki avatar can increase interest in this phase, give students another lens through which they can review their writing, sharpen their speaking and listening skills, and add another creative outlet for displaying their work in their digital portfolios. ~Jim McDermott, New York City Educational Administrator

2) We noticed during our publishing and celebrating parties, that many students, including special ed., ELL, and regular ed. were uncomfortable reading their work aloud to the class. Thanks to Lisa's heads-up about voki.com, we are allowing them to present their work through the use of an online customizable avatar. The avatar speaks in the student's recorded voice, which is uploaded to voki's site. The finished video can then be embedded in edublogs or blogger, or even their own myspace. ~ John Natuzzi, New York City Educator.

3) We had a whole discussion with my grant participants and computer liaisons about using a voki to improve writing especially for ELL students who need to hear the patterns of the spoken word to help with fluency and to improve comprehension. I know a few of them used it already. I will have them post their experiences. I know that the students loved it! ~ Allison Sciandra, New York City Education Administrator.

Here's how to get started

• Register with your email and password.
• Select create.
• Select a character.
• Select the look, clothing and accessories.
• Add your own voice by calling the number Voki provides, or have Voki call your number by entering it.
• Choose a background from the Voki library or upload your own.
• Click Publish to email to a friend or get code to take your Voki avatar anywhere.

Safety note: Voki's are a naturally great way to enable students to publish their work safely as the avatars are nameless. You will want to remind your students that in their Voki message they shouldn't share their name or other personal information.

Innovative Ideas for Using Cell Phones for Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback

Editor's note: This is just one in a series of posts focused on the nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas from the book Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock.

Setting objectives and providing feedback engage students in a metacognitive system of thinking. In other words, it provides students with knowledge about how they learn which is an effective instructional tool. Here are some ways that setting objectives and providing feedback can be enriched with the use of cell phones.

• Classroom Practice in Goal Setting
  Research and theory on goal setting indicates that instructional goals narrow what students focus on, should not be too specific, and that students should be encouraged to personalize the teacher goals.
  
• Subject: Science
• Cell Phone Tool: Wiffiti
  
• Topic: The Human Body
  
• Lesson Overview: In this lesson students are studying the human body. Following the research-based strategy outlined in Classroom Instruction That Works, the teacher has provided general targets for students in the unit, but then asks students to personalize their goals. The teacher explains her goal is for them to understand how each of the main organs works individually as well as how they work together as a system. Then, each student develops their personal learning goals for which the teacher provides the sentence starters: "I want to know... and "I want to know more about..."
  
  This is an effective instructional strategy that can be enriched with the use of Wiffiti. To do this the teacher asks the students to text their personal learning goals to the Wiffiti bulletin board she has created for the class. This instantly enables the teacher and the class to see the type of personal learning goals students have. The value of this for students is 1) They may learn from their classmates new ideas to incorporate or ideas to modify 2) They may want to partner up with other students who share similar learning goals. The value for the teacher is that she can instantly get a big-picture view of her classes learning goals and also instantly see goals that may need modification.
  
  Near the close of the unit the teacher can set up a second Wiffiti board where students can share what they learned in relation to their learning goals. Students with similar goals should be encouraged to partner to share their answers. Not only is this beneficial in recognizing the learning of the class, but it also serves as a fantastic review of the unit and can provide for a great discussion prior to the end-of-unit assessment.
  
• How technology enriches the lesson:
  
• Posting learning goals to a Wiffiti board provides a great way to not only share learning goals across the class, but also is a great resource to share with parents/guardians at the start of a unit.
• Sharing learning outcomes on a Wiffiti board provides a great way not only to help the students review what they learned as a class in the unit, but also is a terrific resource to share with parents/guardians at the end of a unit so they are filled in on their child's learning.
  
• For a teacher this is nice because there are no papers to collect and she can see all student goals and learning at a glace.
• For a student this is nice because they can easily learn from one another. Learning is no longer contained to each student only.,
  

• Classroom Practice in Providing Feedback
  Research and theory on feedback indicates that feedback should be "corrective" in nature, timely, specific to a criterion, and that students can effectively provide some of their own feedback.
  
  
• Subject: Social Studies / Environmental Science
  
• Topic: Womens' Studies / A local environmental issue
  
• Cell Phone Tool: Voki
  
• Lesson Overview: This lesson combines both women's studies and environmental science using Voki's to engage students. In the lesson the teacher will let students work in pairs, threes, or fours and students in each group will select one figure they've studied as a part of women's history and will determine how she might help to address a local environmental issue i.e. developing school gardens, addressing the recycling issue in a local school or community, reversing pollution in a local river, pond, stream.
  
  Students will receive guidelines as to what they need to include in their answer and a rubric by which to assess their work. As students think about the environmental issue and select the historical figure, they will create a Voki using their cell phones to record the voice. The Voki will be created as though she was doing a one-minute public address and she will refer to her prior record and experience to explain how she will address today's issue. Because Vokis are designed so that others can comment, they provide a perfect tool for feedback. In this lesson student's, guided by the rubric will be asked to use the rubric to provide feedback on their own Voki (self-reflection), as well as feedback to others in their group (peer review). Ultimately the teacher will also provide feedback on each student's Voki. Students will have an opportunity to re-record their Voki based on the feedback they received. All Vokis will be placed on the page of an online space of the teachers choosing i.e. website, blog, wiki, ning. When all students have completed their projects students will have the opportunity to listen to a variety of ideas for addressing this local environmental issue and can be encouraged to comment on additional Vokis. Upon completion of this project the page can be sent to the person in charge of this project with a message stating something along these lines: "This is how students of our class feel women in history might have addressed this issue. We hope you will be able to incorporate some of these ideas into your work." The person who received this email and page from the school should be encouraged to leave comments on student Vokis. The result, a relevant, real, and meaningful learning experience for students.
  
• How technology enriches the lesson:
• Using a Voki provides a ready-to-go mechanism for students to provide reflective feedback from themselves, and to gather review from their peers. What's nice about this is it can be done anytime anywhere the student is ready to call Voki and enter the passcode associated with their Voki or comment.
• Using a Voki provides a one stop option for teachers to listen to all student's ideas, reflections and peer review in one place.
  
• Voki enables interested parties to access the information anytime/anywhere and respond. Inviting relevant stateholders to the site and encouraging them to comment will provide a meaningful experience for students.
• The Voki page provides a strong home-school communication. It provides parents with a peak into what is going on in the classroom as well as what their students and others are doing. Upon completion of the project student's work can be shared and parents can be given guidelines and encouraged to comment.
  

Cell phones provide an effective way to support students in setting objectives and providing feedback. Stay tuned for future posts featuring other research-based strategies to engage students and increase student achievement.

Bring Poetry to Life with A Cell Phone and A Voki

This lesson was designed for literacy teachers who are interested in harnessing the power of cell phones in instruction. This can be used for educators who want to integrate cell phones into the curriculum either at school or away from school.

Subject:
Literacy

Tool:
Voki's

Lesson Title:
Bring Poetry to Life with A Cell Phone and A Voki

Lesson Overview:
Students use Vokis to bring their poetry to life and hear themselves reading their pieces.
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Lesson Description:
Voki is a terrific tool to use toward the end of a poetry unit when students are ready to publish their work. A Voki is an animated avitar whose mouth, eyes, and head move to your words. When student poetry pieces are ready for publishing, have them record themselves using their cell phones to give Voki a voice.

Teachers should select a mentor poem to model Voki creation and then have all students create Vokis with the mentor poem. This can lead to a discussion of how various elements affect how a Voki is interpreted and delivered.

Students will then be ready to create a Voki with their own poems. To create the Voki students will visit www.voki.com. At the site students will create a Voki that fits the mood and style of their poem by customizing it in the following ways:

-->Character Style Select a character from one of our many styles: Classic, Animals, Oddballs and more!
-->Customization Change the look, clothing and accessories.
-->Background Choose a background from our library or upload your own.

Next students will have Voki call their cell so they can record their poem. They can record as often as they want until they get it just right. The teacher should group students in pairs, threes, or fours because once Voki's are created and posted to a website, blog, or wiki, students should be encouraged to comment on one another's Voki. If students are not familiar with peer review and appropriate feedback, the teacher will want to model a lesson on what is appropriate and the type of comments one might make.

The Vokis will serve as an engaging forum for how students will publish their work. This can also be shared with families and linked to the school website. Students may want to teach their family, friends, teachers, and administrators how to comment on their Voki's as well.

How to get started.

• Register with your email and password.
• Select create.
• Select a character.
• Select the look, clothing and accessories.
• Add your own voice by calling the number Voki provides, or have Voki call your number by entering it.
• Choose a background from the Voki library or upload your own.
• Click Publish to email to a friend or get code to take your Voki avatar anywhere.

How cell phones enrich this lesson.
Having students create Vokis enriches this lesson in several ways. First, it provides students with an opportunity to practice and hear themselves saying their poem. It allows them to do so in a non-threatening way. It alsoprovides a medium for all student's work to be displayed and commented on by each other as well as friends, family, and other staff members.

Special comments/considerations:
If a student doesn't have a cell, they can have the Voki call the number of a friend or family member for recording. If a student doesn't have access to a computer for having the Voki call their phone, the teacher can partner students in pairs or threes that consist of one student having a computer. This also works great for collaboration and peer review purposes.

NETS Standards:
1. Creativity and Innovation - Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Communication and Collaboration - Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.