Fourth graders in Ms. Cousins’ class at Davis Elementary have been studying the Civil War for several weeks now (SOLVS.7), and today they wanted a fun way to review the important people. I listed all of them on the board and the students chose one that they wanted to research. I explained that they would be making animated characters using Voki and they should try to make them look as much like the real people as possible. So part of their research involved looking at old photos of them. I showed them how to change the skin, hair, and eye color, and how to add different backgrounds and clothing. Once their character looked relatively realistic, they clicked the voice tab and chose text to speech. They typed a few facts for their person to say, explaining who they were and their important accomplishments. Then I showed them how to pick an accent, which is one of the best parts! Another thing I really like about Voki is that students can publish their creations without having to create an account. So each student published their animation and saved the link to their folder. I put all the links together on one Google Doc that you can see here.
