Speaking Tools for your Classroom
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| Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay |
Hello, welcome back to my 6th blog post!
Today I am going to talk about an online speaking tool that benefits both teachers & students!
This is week's tool is Voki, by using it, you can create and alter a character's appearance and make it speak by adding a voice message recorded from your phone/tablet or microphone. This tool also offers a text-to-speech feature with more than 25 languages.
Conversing with Vokis can boost learner motivation, make the classroom more fun and the students more comfortable with class projects and presentations. Shy students can use Vokis to express feelings and share writing with the class, but make sure they don't get used to hiding behind an avatar!!
How to Create a Voki:
Here are some student activities and lesson plans that you can do with Voki:
Follow this video in order to see how to create your own classroom and to set up an assignment page for your students:
A step-by-step guide on how to create a Voki presentation is shown in the video below:
Advantages of using Voki:
- Easy to use / user-friendly
- You can embed the clips that you made into documents or websites
- Promotes student motivation
- You can manage and monitor assignments, your classes and your students
- Students don't need to register to use it
- The Voki Presenter feature
- It's engaging and collaborative
- Easy for teacher to set up lessons
- Takes less time to prepare a lesson
Disadvantages of using Voki:
- Audio time is limited to 60 seconds
- The customization of the characters is limited
- In order to get access to all of Voki's features as an educational tool, you need to subscribe to Voki Classroom
- The limit of the written content in each assignment must be 500 words or less
Similar to Voki:
A similar tool to Voki is the Tellagami app. Even though they are both very similar, Tellagami is only available through the Apple Store, which is a huge restriction towards Android users! You also have to pay for it which is a huge disadvantage. Tellagami is also not suitable for group work and in order to use it to its full potential you will have to pay for packs!
However, if you are curious to see how Tellagami can be used, check this video!
Overall, I would definitely recommend Voki! I think that this tool can work with any age group but it is probably best suited for younger kids. It encourages learners to speak in the target language, to use their 21st century digital skills and to publish their work online!
What do you think? Do you think you can give Voki a try in your classroom?
Let me know in the comments below!
Comments
I really enjoy your blog this week! I love these useful links you put about students activities and lesson plans. Also, I like your comparison part between Voki and Tellagami. Very informative blog. Looking forward to your next blog.
Great sharing of Voki. I really love the links and videos you shared on some of the activities to carry out with this tool as well as how to create my own Voki avatar. Very useful and fun to read. Looking forward to more posts from you~ ^^
This is a wonderful blog post (Congratulations, you did it again!). I remember how fun and interactive our lesson was. It's such a shame that we couldn't instal Tellagami on our devices but I think Voki is another good alternative tool that we can use as a substitute. Anyway, I love your blog and keep up the good job! x
You did provide some useful ideas and links of how to use Voki in English education. It's considerate of you to mention Voki's similar tool--Tellagami for readers to compare. Besides, you definitedly have a good taste of art. The background, layout, font and color look nice together and make me feel comfortable.