Voki

Who made Voki?

Voki is brought to you by the folks at Oddcast, a New York based company that has been creating speaking characters on the web for years. These are the same people behind the popular Careerbuilder Monk-e-mail.

Will Voki always be free?

Yes, you will always be able to come and create a character for free at Voki. However, we may offer special items or characters for sale at some point. Also some of the things you can do with your Voki, like downloading it to your phone, may cost money. It is also likely that you will see different kinds of sponsorship on the site. No matter what we do to make money through Voki, we'll make sure we keep you in the loop, get your feedback, and try not to do anything that makes Voki less entertaining to have.

Can anyone use Voki?

Voki is solely and exclusively for personal, non-commercial use only. If you run a business website where you sell things or you run a site about your business a real estate agency, for example, then Voki is not for you. We have a product called SitePal that costs a small monthly fee for business class users.

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One teacher of a Spanish class introduced Voki to the class to facilitate the learning process. After encouraging students to write a small description of 80 - 100 words on their home town, students were given time with the software to create their own Voki using the Spanish description. Here is one of their examples:

 Lesson plan - http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=104

More Examples -   http://www.asisehace.net/blog/?tag=voki

Voki within the classroom seem to be the perfect for motivating students to do homework or to try hard during assessments. However it is important to make sure that teachers are asking students to create a unique piece of work that combines their research skills with their creative skills. Voki, as mentioned before, does have the dice function to create a character limiting the amount of work students have to do. One example found on the internet was an assignment based on creating a Shakespeare character and giving them some lines from the play. I understand that I do not have the criteria and these are just examples however I am using this as an example of things to watch out for.

 Website - https://sheehy-english.wikispaces.com/Romeo+and+Juliet+Final+Project+Voki+Example

A complete example that I have found on the internet concerns an American school that has allowed the students to research famous Americans and have the students introduce their person through the form of the Voki. Below is an example from the class.

 More Examples - http://bbces.tcboe.org/?PageName='TeacherPage'&Page='ClassActivities'&StaffID='58807

The last example of using Voki within the classroom environment is the communication either between students and the rest of the world or between teachers and students. Due to security concerns around the internet students are able to introduce themselves, without actually showing their faces, to students around the world.

 more examples - http://votw.wikispaces.com/September's+Task

In terms of introducing new concepts to the class, teachers can use their own Voki to make a fun and interesting way to learn by introducing technology into the classroom.

  http://igeog.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/voki-geog-vodcasting-embedding-voki-in-wordpress/