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The creative use of Voki in our etwinning project 2016 "Using Web Tools 2.0 to communicate, collaborate, create"

We have used Voki with my 6th graders for our etwinning project last year, too!So you could say we had already been familiar with it and maybe-just maybe-we wouldn't find it as exciting anymore!  But, no,  this year, we have found a new way to use it, a way that made it the most exciting, entertaining and successful activity of the project. Students had a great time and Voki is still on the top of the list with their favourite web tools!
Those of you who have used Voki would know that students love making up characters and they could spend hours choosing the right eyes, nose or mouth, the appropriate background for their characters and they could go on forever experimenting with voices and  accents when they give their characters a voice to speak! This happens everytime! They are never bored because they have a large number of alternatives!
The title of the activity was "Famous people in disguise". Specifically, what they had to do was the following:

  • Students were divided in groups and they had to decide on a person from the country famous around the world. They could choose anyone they liked, an actor/actress, a singer, a politician, a writer, a composer etc.
  •  Then they had to collect information about this person and write a short text with the most striking pieces of information.For example, their profession, what made this person famous, when this happened etc.
  • Then they went on to create their characters,but they had to make them completely different from what they really looked like, because they were supposed to be disguised. Partners would guess who they were based only on the information they gave on themselves. 
  • Then they gave their characters voice so that they gave the information the students had collected about them. 
This is what some of the Voki characters looked like:


Some of the characters we have created can be found here:



http://www.voki.com/site/pickup?scid=12406315&width=575&height=323&chsm=735c4dfb59e8abdeb8e27819f8e14387

(note: unfortunately, it seems that the "embed"option which was free until a few weeks ago,  is not incuded in the free version anymore. We were able to embed our Vokis on Twinspace some months ago.)

After we had created our Vokis, schools had to listen to the information the Vokis from another school gave and guess who each person was. We listened to the information twice in class, pupils took notes and went home to search, based on the information they had extracted from the listening. Our guesses were posted on a  Padlet wall. This is what it looked like: 





It has been such an exciting activity, both the creation and the guessing! Students worked with enthusiasm and they were eager both to guess and see if others would guess their creations. All in all it was meaningful, fun and interesting.It included reading, listening and writing and it promoted both individual and collaborative work. It also involved both cultural and intercultural exchange of
information. For all these reasons,  it was voted the best activity of this year's project!

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