Voki Happy

Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized avatars to use on your wikis, blogs or websites. The best thing about Voki is that it motivates learners of different ages, because of their highly interactivity by providing various options for students to customize them. This service provides various features which allows students to personalize their speaking avatar's voice, appearance, hair color, background, clothing, etc. 

Image Source: Flickr by I'm Your Father with some rights reserved

Image Source: Flickr by I'm Your Father with some rights reserved.

Teachers can use this in the classroom by having their students creating digital identities. For English classes mainly, whether ESL or the mainstream English classes, students can use it for any digital storytelling projects. This can help raise the learners' interests in reading and storytelling which will help improve their speaking and reading skills. Besides that, learners can create conversations with their classmates or teacher and this can help to motivate all kinds of learners--the quiet or the outspoken ones--to practice their speaking and listening skills.

Besides that, most parents would feel comfortable with their children using avatars instead of their real identities especially when it is geared towards learning. 

Here are some suggestions that teachers can do with Voki in their classroom, this is geared mostly towards English teachers. 

Using COMICS in the classroom? Yay.

Comics In The Classroom

Image Source: Flickr by Stallio with some rights reserved.

Let's admit it, we all love, if not like reading comics once in a while. I'm sure the one above attracted your attention. Using comics in the classroom is a fresh and captivating idea to me. After reading this article, I thought to myself, what a clever tool to capture the attention of students. Not only that, comic is an effective tool in engaging learners--all kinds of learners. The best thing is, comics can be used in almost any subjects. As a future English teacher, I could totally see how comic can be incorporated into my classroom and lessons. For example, instead of having students to learn up a new vocabulary by checking the dictionary, they could read a comic that explains the word in context. Students will not only remember the word and its meaning more quickly and better, it also allows them to practice their analytic skills as they learn to guess the meaning of the word in context. 
               A comic is capable to represent pages of written materials while it is enjoyable and effective for students in their learning. Teachers should know what are the things that students of today and future would be attracted to, and turn them into meaningful learning opportunities. Comic Life is a software program that is easy to use by anyone to create his/her own comics.