Tristan and the Shark

Get a Voki now!



My nephew Tristan and I were sitting in his mother's (my sister) hospital room the day his sister was born listening to all the other conversations. While we weren't directly involved, I thought I would find something online from my sister's laptop that Tristan would enjoy. We didn't have much time, so I opened up Voki. He picked his own avatar and told me what to write(it was too noisy to record his voice). This was accomplished very promptly, so we were ready when everyone else was ready to eat lunch.

Tristan loved Voki and told me he wants to get a Pokemon avatar next time. He would like to record his voice also.

Voki, OK!

Voki, Oki, Oki, Oy! When the producers of Voki discovered this name, they were on to something engaging. The web application is cool, the name is cool and the ways you can use it are cool. Voki is very cool.

My first experience with Voki was on a profile page of one of my Classroom 2.0 colleagues, Jonelle. I was smitten. The realistic avatars, backgrounds and presentation box were so appealing that I had to find out about Voki.

Students are also enticed by Voki, even mature, sophisticates (young adults) have engaged Voki. They use it to tell about themselves, to share information about their school and to practice their online, interactive skills in a protected environment.

Since Voki is a widget, a web application, it stands alone. While you do sign up for Voki, you don't have to interact within a community to benefit from this application. I have seen Voki avatars in a variety of online places, including profiles, blogs, wikis and webspaces. Any of these places can provide students a protected environment where they can experiment and develop educational online experiences.

One aspect of Voki that can be interactive is the comment section of the Voki box, so students can respond to a Voki presentation, just as they might comment on a blog. While commenting or making their first Voki, students don't have to use their own voices. Voki has a text to talk mechanism with a choice of several accents and voices of both genders. I use the Kate voice who has a slight British accent, and I consider it most effective.

Earlier, I wrote a blogpost explaining how to accomplish a action research based evaluation of Voki, as used by students called, "Welcome to My Web!", Said the Spider to the Fly, included Voki and Weather Widget in a blogpost. The purpose of this first post included evaluating web based, online applications, so I reviewed Voki as soon as I started using it.

Recently, I decided to make another review of Voki, because I believe this widget has met critical mass among those teachers using online, web applications with their students. In one day, I found Voki on the majority of the new websites, blogs and wikis that I visited among a group of teachers planning an online educational conference. That is above and beyond all of my colleagues on various educational networks who are using Voki extensively.

Documenting this rise in the use of Voki, I made several searches, some were general search engines and the social bookmarking network, favored by teachers, del.icio.us. If there are other networks or search engines that I could use in the future, please let me know;D Here are some of the results:

*del.icio.us There were a total of 139 SEPARATE bookmarks for VOKI. Within those bookmarks, more than 5,000 users had also selected this combination of 139 bookmarks.

*google.com A total of 33,000 website references contained this search string: Voki, education, school. Amazing!

*yahoo.com More than 40,000 urls contained the same three tags: Voki, education, school. There are thousands more because I noticed that all tags of Voki in Classroom 2.0 were clustered in one search result, so that is probably the same situation in all the educational network searches.

*adonomics.com A Facebook analysis and developer services has many compare/contrast analyses. This one is comparing Voki to Meez.

References to Voki can be found in Digg and Ask.com, so it seems the point is proven that Voki has reached critical mass for educational use around the world. Have fun and learn with Voki;D

BTW: I find it very exciting to see the expression of the promise of a particular widget that I know has great educational potential. There are specific educational activities and projects that Voki can enable or enhance, and that is a blogpost all in itself.

"Welcome to My Web!", Said the Spider to the Fly

When teachers find new technology, whether it is hardware or software, evaluation is critical. As a teacher, you want to determine efficacy. Is the new technology efficient, easy to use and accessible? One of my favorite tools in my efficacy evaluation toolbox is the KID TEST.

Here is how the KID TEST works. Put the device or software out where students, or any KID, will see it. See how long it takes them to tell you about it. The faster they find it, use it, and share the new technology the higher the KID TEST score.

As they tell you about it, the KID TEST rank can increase or decrease with their discussions of descriptions and uses the students discover. I always appreciate using the 5 point Leikert scale to document my technology evaluations, including the KID TEST.

Recently, I performed the KID TEST when I found two new widgets that a teaching colleague, Jonelle, was using on her Classroom 2.0 profile page. To me, they looked very unique, so I thought students might like to use them.

To find out if students will like them, I must perform the KID TEST. Before I start the KID TEST, I like to tryout the technology myself. I inserted the two widgets, Weather Pixies and VOKI, in my n2teaching blog. Both of these widgets are informative and interactive. Each has an avatar that you select. The avatar in Weather Pixie is dressed appropriately for the weather in your area in a little scene with the temperature, etc. The VOKI avatar's eyes track the movement of the mouse when it is the vicinity of the widget and it will talk when you click on the PLAY button. This is my public education oriented blog, and I often share information with students here.

To practice the KID TEST, I always use my kid as my practice tester. I placed my widgets online, and I waited. After a few days, my kid, Dena, asked me about one of them. I told her, and that was that. Interesting, appealing, but no immediate knowledge transfer. Probably a 3 on a 5 point Leikert Scale for the KID TEST.

A few days later, we were discussing various bits of code that she has used recently, while I posted a blog entry. When I scrolled down to check out my map widget, I passed over the VOKI widget. Dena asked, "What's that?". I replied, "That's the other widget I discovered on my colleague's profile page." I mentioned that the image I used was the closest I could find to fit me, and she said, "I like it."

We discussed the fine points of VOKI. Dena said, "You can type what you want it to say?" and "Can you use your own voice?", so I told her that both options were possible. She says, "Wow, I like it!"

Then Dena proceeds to tell me that she has been looking for a widget like this, but the only one she found was a talking widget service that costs $19.99 per month.

OK, I know an opportunity when I see one, so, while I was traveling to the VOKI website, I asked if she wanted to see the website. A enthusiastic yes, bumped up the VOKI tech evaluation score, so off we went to the website.

Dena was impressed with the great variability and opportunities to use VOKI.

Try it out, I give VOKI a 5 out of 5 on the initial KID TEST, and I hope you will see all the possible uses a teacher could have for this creatively cool widget.