Putting your Best Face Forward- Using Avatars

Putting your Best Face Forward- Using avatars

I uploaded the following post to our school’s TechConnect blog. It was spurred by the wave of avatar creations for ALL students across grade levels due to the participation of each class in the Egypt VoiceThread.

What is an avatar?

An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself or herself. We need to be careful when representing ourselves in any form online. You do not want to use a photograph of yourself, that might identify you to others how you look, how old you are or where you live. You also do not want to name your avatar with your full name. First names are defining without being revealing, unless you have a very unique first name.

There are many different ways how you could create you own avatar. You will use them when you write on a blog, in a VoiceThread (digital storybook), or participate in a chat or discussion forum.

You can create an image on the computer using a drawing or illustration of yourself, use clip art or take a digital picture of an object, such as a guitar, football, that you identify with. Be creative.

Here are some examples of great avatars:

Before introducing the concept of an avatar to the kids, I ask each student to share something about themselves that most of the class did not know. We heard that one girl liked rodents, one had her own pet raccoon, another owned 5 turtles, etc. After each student shared a tidbit, I asked if a stranger would know who in this class had something to do with a raccoon? No! Do we (in the class) know, which student likes raccoons? Yes! It seemed to make sense to them now to use a representation, such as a picture of something else, to allow friends to identify them, but not strangers. In come the avatars…

I asked my Twitter network (thank you @murcha, @technoteach, @tmcgrath, @metaweb20, @karlyb) for more elementary school website that allow an easy and appropriate creation of avatars. The following links were suggested, but after a closer (remember I teach elementary students) I chose not to use them for the following reasons:

• WeeWorld- Ads with inappropriate and suggestive images and text. Once you choose a body part, eye color and head shape you are confronted with a Adam & Eve style leaves in appropriate places. I can just imagine the gasping among the students! You can create the avatar without having to register.
• Voki - Also with ads, geared towards the older crowd. Talking avatar, which would not work when needed in VoiceThread
• Portrait Illustration Maker- Google Ads on the side, which always make me nervous with the elementary crowd. Otherwise looks OK, except too outgoing links take you too streaming RSS feed. No control or idea what will be displayed if students happen to end up on the page.

In the end, I ended up suggesting to the students to use KidPix to create a portrait of themselves or to use Build Your Wild Self website, from the New York Zoo and Aquarium.

Once students had created their “wild self”, they saved it > as a Wild Desktop > then right clicked >Save Image As> and we had a copy of the avatar. Kids LOVED it. It was a lot of fun, in addition to learning animal facts from the different body parts they chose.

There is also a Avatar-Maker in Kerpoof. Children do need to register (no e-mail address required) There is no “save as” option in Kerpoof, but if you have a screen capture tool like Jing, you have a work around.

Webkinz in Elementary Schools

Last week, I ordered a Webkinz Polar Bear from Ebay. The main purpose was to have a Polar Bear stuffed animal for my upcoming German Summer Camp. It arrived in the mail today (If you are wondering about the connection between Germany and a Polar Bear, you need to check out Knut). I am getting ready to explore the possibilities with my almost 13 year old daughter on the Webkinz website and the possible uses in an educational setting.

Please let me know if you have, planning to or are using it Webkinz in the classroom.

Maria Knee commented on Online Gaming here to stay. Do you dare enter? post by Chreyl Oakes

As you already know, my kindergarten class has adopted a Webkinz – a frog they named Spikey Spike. We visit the site a couple of times a week, in class, for about 15 minutes each time. As a class, we make decisions about how to spend our money and what to feed our pet. We usually do the daily activities. Using this virtual environment in class provides opportunities to discuss online behavior with my students. I also enjoy having class discussions about how to care for the pet and using decision making skills/tools. My students also enjoy the soft, cuddly Webkinz as well.

Why would a teacher look into Webkinz? What educational purpose could it have?

James Tubbs from MrTeacher blog writes in this blog post “Webkinz: Web 2.0 for younger kids”:

To me, the popularity of the Webkinz site and my students’ level of engagement with Venture Africa reinforce the necessity of using these technologies–games and social software (my students communicated with each other through my classroom blog)–in the classroom. It’s very important that we begin to leave behind the tired teaching approaches that still dominate our classrooms. Our kids are bored and unmotivated by them. Bring in the right video game though and engagement soars.

Bob Sprankle in a Bit by Bit post “Dead Ends in Webkinz?” also pays attention to the maybe not so great side affects, such as consumerism and asks himself:

Why can’t Webkinz rise above this? Bring in more challenging material? They need to pump it up soon, or kids will tire of rearranging their virtual rooms, and hopefully, also tire of endless, mindless buying.

Violet, a commenter on Bob’s post states:

The games are filled with strategy and build logic skills in order to solve them. The trivia questions are, first of all, differentiated for different ability levels, but also challenge the kids with using the context of the question to problem solve to find the correct answer. The vocabulary is challenging, which I find that schools do not emphasize as often as they used to do. I will admit that the site does not give a lot of opportunity for creative and divergent thinking, but that is the nature of computer-type games. There is some room for creativity, but within a limited scope, like when allowing the children to decorate the rooms where their pets live. All in all, I find the Webkinz site to be an excellent educational site for kids from elementary to middle school ages.

Here are some other links I came across regarding Webkinz.

• Second Life for the elementary school set
• Webkinz: A Second Life/MySpace Mashup for Grade Schoolers:
  

Take a look at it and you’ll begin to realize how soon the kindergarten through junior high generation will leapfrog over adults in their ability to use the Internet, their understanding of e-commerce, their acceptance of online community, and the idea that one’s social life can be centered in a virtual world.
Publishers: this is how kids will learn instead of with already obsolete text books. Fashion, music, art and commerce online will be as natural a part of young digital natives’ lives as TV was to baby boomers. The Internet has indeed changed everything. We sure live in interesting times.

• Staying in touch with Long Distance Relatives

So, it’s a fun toy. But it’s much more than that, because their grandmother has one too. And so do their cousins. Their grandmother can invite the kids’ pets over to her virtual room. She sends them presents and notes. They play against each other in trivia and arcade games. My boys get a kick out of their grandmother being online and playing with them on their level. I think it’s a great idea. We live very far away. Even when we do visit, it’s hard to find time to just sit and play, because lots of relatives are around, too.
Their Webkinz animals have become a way for them to check in with their grandmother and cousins several times a week. I know they will always remember playing this way with their relatives.