Okay, so this past week I had my ESL students take their turn at Voki.com. and they LOVED it. For those who don't know, Voki.com is a very popular site that allows students to create speaking avatars and then use them as proofreaders for paragraphs, essays, or presentations. This site is really cool and creative. I found this app online via a recommended Glog. In prepping my students for the TOEFL Speaking Section, I found Voki to be AWESOME for both proofreading and listening skills enhancement. My students wrote a short paragraph on the topic of their most memorable experience from high school. Next, they registered for Voki and then created their own avatar. They had so much fun. There is a large variety of designs to customize your own avatar. Then, I had them type their edited paragraph into the text box and when they were finished, I saved their presentation and played it back to them. I could immediately notice misspelled words because the avatar would pronounce the word the way it was spelled. I could also identify by sound run on sentences. I pointed out the mistakes made by each of my student's and then had them re-edit their work. Once I was satisfied with their presentations, I had my students send them to my personal Vokia account. From here, I have the options of sharing each one of them via email. or sharing them each on their classroom blog. So, here's the final rundown: You can create multiple avatars for multiple presentations. It doesn't matter what learning level your students are because proofreading and listening are applicable to every level of ESL. Voki is the most fluent speaking avatar available. There is no spell check available on Voki.com, so the student is forced to listen for mistakes such as misspelled words, improper punctuation such as missing periods or commas, and sentence structure. One of the great advantages of Voki is that it gives a louder voice to the more shy students in class.
Well, I hope this is helpful. I will post a few YouTube videos to follow#mr.ford
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