Here is my son speaking a little Spanish. I first saw Voki being used in Joe Dale’s ICT Blog; he and his colleagues use this tool extensively at Nodehill School with their MFL classes to get the pupils to record themselves speaking in the foreign language. They then apply the recordings to one of these clever avatars in in the Voki website, where you can customise the look of your chosen character, often to hilarious effect. It is all free and pupils only need an Internet connection to liven up their homework of an evening.
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!
The outgoing ones will not shut up at home or at school, so this won’t affect them, but the shyer ones, I bet you, will produce stunning pieces of work. After all, it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?
And, as usual, why limit ourselves to Foreign Languages? why not do a gangsta-rap for English? or a presentation about the North Pole with an Eskimo character as your avatar, funny accent and all? Hours of fun. I can’t wait to try it.
This post is tagged assessment, differentiation, modern languages
