Voki - Avatars in Education

Avatars are excellent for online education. They provide the human interaction that is natural in classrooms and in the traditional learning environment.

Message boards, email, and instant messaging are great tools for writing. But what about voice communication! Posting a question on a message board is useful but many times asking the question is better. It is instant, direct, and uses the nuance of voice. Skype works well but avatars are better.

Avatars provide a face to the students and a face to the teacher. They provide the human element to online teaching.

A Cohen

I'm delighted Oddcast the company who runs Voki have decided to make a free alternative to their commercial service Sitepal designed for businesses to promote their products as it create a whole range of new opportunities for language teachers wanting to extending their pupils' speaking skills in a fun and engaging way.

Joe Dale

It occurred to me that we all have pupils who won't shut up in our lessons: coyness is a concept alien to them. However there are others who are painfully shy, who seldom say anything in class and we would like to include and give them an opportunity to shine.

I wonder whether it would better suit the latter to record themselves in the privacy and comfort of their own home and then produce the Voki avatars in class, along with all the other pupils' avatar creations. What a great homework that would be!

J Picardo

[Vokis] create a whole range of new opportunities for language teachers wanting to extending their pupils' speaking skills in a fun and engaging way. Why not try it out with your pupils and and see if it gets them talking.

Joe Dale

What kinds of avatars do members create for themselves? Some are pictures or icons borrowed from internet archives, scanned from hardcopy, or taken from other digital sources.

Users might edit or combine these pictures according to their particular tastes.

Some artistic members create props from scratch, although this is a fairly rare - and envious - skill. The technical and artistic ability one demonstrates through personal avs is an important source of self-esteem and social status.

John Suler

Avatars are a unique cyber product that hold much potential to be a market success because they provide consumers with various psychological benefits such as anonymous personalization and an artificial sense of well-being in cyberspace.

However, due to the very nature of avatars, consumer psychology, and the way that they are marketed to teenage consumers, avatars may also pose considerable threat to unsuspecting teenagers through addictive consumption and associated negative social consequences causing harm to the teenagers and the general public.

O Lee & M Shin