Voki, the avatar creating website  that has proved so popular amongst language teachers, is being relaunched this term. I am very fortunate to be involved in this relaunch as a Voki Ambassador, one of a dozen or so educators around the world who are collaborating with Voki in New York to ensure a renewed focus on Education. So what can we expect?

Voki allows teachers and students to create speaking avatars in a fun, stimulating and engaging way. Although some initially find tools such as Voki of little educational value, upon closer inspection, teachers quickly realise that Voki allows students to express themselves on the internet in safety and confidently, as their real identities are hidden behind the avatar. Suddenly, with Voki, the shy become outspoken and the reticent assured.

As far as teaching languages is concerned, I have found throughout the years that using Voki helps my students improve their oral proficiency in the target language and that it’s often the shy one at the end of the classroom who comes up with the most impressive piece of spoken language.

The new Voki for Education is being officially relaunched to better cater for teachers and students. We can look forward to the following new features:

• New look and feel: Voki is looking to become more relevant to teachers whilst ensuring it remains a pupil friendly tool
• No ads: during the relauch period, beginning as of now, Voki has pledged to remove ads for anyone using Voki (no ads ever for paid up Voki customers, more on cost below)
• Voki lesson plan database: Find out how other educators are using Voki in their classrooms
• Teachers’ corner: Communicate with like-minded educators around the world, inspire and get inspired, share Voki tips, join relevant educational discussions
• Community: Get to know educators and students from other countries, use Voki to start a conversation
• Newbie’s corner: Savvy Voki users will have the opportunity to support our new users with their first steps
• Text-to-speech: Create Vokis from text in 25 languages
• Email technical support: Help at hand when you need it

Will Voki remain free?

Yes, the idea is that Voki will always remain free. My understanding is that Voki is introducing a premium service that, for a small yearly fee, removes ads permanently and provides teachers with classroom management tools within Voki.

To find out more about how Voki is being used in the classroom watch these Teachers TV videos, the first of which was filmed at my school, Nottingham High School, and the second at Whitehouse Common Primary School and actually features on the Voki homepage.

In addition, I recently wrote a short paper titled Using Blogs and Voki to increase motivation and oral participation amongst boys in Modern Foreign Languages. Although focusing on the use of Vokis exclusively by boys, the examples of practice and findings are relevant to primary and secondary pupils of both genders.

To find out more about these exciting new developments, sign up to Voki’s newsletter.

José Picardo

José is Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Nottingham High School, a secondary school in England, and is interested in the way technology can be used to enhance and transform teaching and learning. José has been curating Box of Tricks since 2007 and holds a MA in ICT and Education.

More Posts - Website - Twitter

This post is tagged modern languages, useful websites, voki, web applications