Voki: Select and customize your own avatar
1. What's VOKI?
Voki is a fun educational and technology tool for teachers and learners. It is authorable so teachers can demonstrate their creativity and adapt it to their learners's needs and context. Your learners can choose and customize their own avatar by choosing different features and by adding a voice and sound effects. voki users can record their own voice or type in their text to make their avatar speak.Watch the tutoral
2. Is it relevant for all teaching contexts?
Teachers in large and heterogeneous classes can use Voki to stimulate their students' interest and motivate them to do homework, classwork or projects. It enables them to enhance their speaking and writing skills while having fun, but also to share their final product with a real audience. Voki can also be used as a classroom tool to foster autonomous learning because it enables shy students to air their ideas and develop their creativity. There are different advantages for using fun tools in the EFL classroom. They engage learners in meaningful interactions, break the routine of long boring teacher-centered classes, encourage communication and collaboration, and develop creativity.
3. My experience with Voki
I personally use Voki to encourage my young learners to engage in writing tasks. Writing is generally perceived as a boring activity, however, using Voki triggered their inhibited desire to complete homework because they were eager to share their product with the whole class. This tool 'offers digital contexts and communication' (Walker et al, 2013: 17) and is a great opportunity for your learners to practice fluency and pronunciation by recording and listening to their own voice.
4. Adopt and adapt voki for your learners
Meanwhile, like any other technological tool, Voki has its limitations as regards to its adaptability in certain learning environments. Second language teachers in contexts similar to mine (Senegal) should consider the access to internet and to computers for all learners. An alternative to that would be splitting classes into bigger groups, and making sure that all participants have equal chances to interact and contribute. Teachers should also be alert against plagiarism, as lazy learners might be tempted to copy and paste texts from the internet. Lack of control during tasks may also lead students to use it for other purposes.
